Volume 1, Number 12

December 27, 2005

Technology Report

Predicting Failure Before It Happens

Ask any IT Administrator what keeps them up at night and many will say the fear of losing a mission critical server. Forward thinking administrators go to great lengths to avoid the loss of a server. Whenever possible, they build in redundancy on the servers. Redundancy includes, but is not limited to:

• multiple hard drives

• redundant power

• redundant fans

• even redundant servers in a clustered environment

These best business practices should be required in a corporate environment. But ultimately, redundancy doesn’t mean as much if it isn’t monitored. A server could lose a hard drive in a RAID 1 or RAID 5 configuration and continue running for months. However, if it goes unnoticed, the loss of a second drive in the array would be catastrophic.

Having a person check the servers periodically is not enough. It is potentially too easy for a failed drive to go unnoticed. Although you may get by with a failed drive, unfortunately, it is impossible to not notice a second failed drive. To better protect the network, it is recommended that a system be put into place to automatically alert administrators of failures and potential failures.

There are many ways to achieve this. Here are just a couple highlighted.

HP Insight Manager

Hewlett Packard offers the HP Systems Insight Manager. The Insight Manager allows servers to proactively send alerts whenever there is a failure or imminent failure to the HP system.

Tools such as the Insight Manager offer the fundamental building blocks that a secure managed network is built upon.

Microsoft Operations Manager

Microsoft's Operation Manager (MOM) is another excellent choice for event and performance management. MOM is a full featured event and performance management tool. When coupled with HP or Dell server tools, MOM can be used to protect and report on server failures.

MOM can also manage such things as Active Directory, Exchange and the like. For example, with MOM 2005 and the Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack, synthetic transactions can be used to monitor the latency experienced by Outlook, Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Exchange ActiveSync technology. You can generate warning alerts when the latency is over a predetermined threshold, allowing administrators to address potential issues before they become reality.

MOM also can speed resolution of issues through providing system and application specific knowledge from the experts at Microsoft. MOM can also provide excellent reporting and trend analysis and is the comprehensive event management product from Microsoft.

Summary

With today’s computing environment, it is important that servers be managed from a central location. This management is considered key to maintaining a company’s uptime.

ZAG Receives Outstanding Partner of the Quarter from Microsoft

"Recognized with Winning on Value Award"

San Jose, CA – November 15, 2005 - – ZAG Technical Services, Inc. (ZAG), a leading Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, received the Quarterly Excellence Award from Microsoft for Winning on Value. The award recognizes the Microsoft partner that has most successfully demonstrated excellence in selling the value of the Microsoft technology solution set against competitive situations.

“Microsoft places a strong emphasis on their relationships with their partners and believes they should be recognized for their efforts over the past quarter,” said Diana Beckman, area general manager of Microsoft’s Northern California Area. “As a company, we’re proud of the great relationships we have with partners like ZAG Technical Services, and we want to recognize them for their exceptional performance.”

This award was the second Quarterly Partner award that ZAG has received within less than a year.

“I am extremely proud of the entire ZAG Team. The entire team contributed to this win.” said Greg Gatzke, a Principal with ZAG Technical Services, Inc. “The entire ZAG team has an outstanding knowledge of Microsoft products, and it makes conveying the value that Microsoft brings to the table easy.”

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