Remote Support

The phone rings; “My email isn’t working.” Now you have to decide: do you drive across town to give in-person support, or try to find a solution from where you are sitting? Personal visits for every support request are impractical, but telephone support can be frustrating and, at worst, a waste of time when a visit proves necessary after all.

Secure Remote Access with SSL VPNs

What to look for when choosing an SSL VPN appliance for small business customers
Secure sockets layer (SSL) virtual private network (VPN) software has been around for a long time, but it is only relatively recently that is has been delivered on dedicated hardware appliances that specialise in hosting remote access, with many of those devices aimed squarely at the SMB market.

How to get paid on time

Get your payment terms straight from the start and follow up on invoices professionally to deal with problem payers

Using vCenter Converter in standalone mode

Taking physical machines and making them virtual is a complex task. That’s why you’ll need tools like VMware’s vCenter Converter to handle the conversion.

Mining Logs with Splunk

There’s a lot of information floating around in a network, information that’s being written into log files every minute of every day. Those log files that contain everything you need to know about how the systems you’re managing are running, and how they’re responding to the demands of their users.

Setting up SANmelody to create your own Storage Fabric

Setting up SANmelody to create your own storage fabric

When you install the operating system on the storage server do not format the disks you will use for storage, just initialise them. The storage software will take care of everything else.

Set up event subscriptions in Windows 2008

Set up an event subscription between two Windows Server 2008 systems

Protecting against power issues in a small office takes more than picking a UPS

Protect computers from power problems and you can extend their working life as well as avoiding downtime and possible data corruption. Losing data on a laptop or desktop is bad enough, but losing a server to a power surge or power cut can be much more severe, potentially even a threat to the business. Losing a mail server or a major database can lead to serious data corruption that will take you time, perhaps even days, to resolve. During that time, your customer’s business is being impacted, and even if they’ve ignored your advice they’re likely to blame you, so you need to explain the danger and convince them to protect their systems.

Saving power, saving money with a green energy audit: cut printer costs and create power plans

Cold mornings and the clocks going back are going to put up heating and lighting bills for businesses as winter draws in, but increasingly IT is putting up the electricity bill too. Power prices have increased significantly this year and it’s not yet clear whether they have peaked. Offer customers a power audit that covers printing, servers, desktop PCs, storage and peripherals or include it when you’re planning a new deployment to sweeten the deal — and try it out in your own office to find out how much you can save by managing IT power.

BlackBerry without BES

RIM’s little smartphones are some of the most popular devices on the market – but BES is complex and costly. How can you get customers online without the cost of a full BlackBerry server?