Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadDecember 20, 2013OK, it’s the happiest time of year and the best time of year to get the latest and greatest devices and equipment … Right? The holidays are upon us and here are a few tips you might want to consider before you whip out your credit card … Budget – Consider your overall technology budget and the comprehensive plans you have
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadOctober 23, 2013Continuity refers to the ability to get your systems running quickly during an outage. When your server goes down and can’t be brought back up – now what? If you have regular, non-image based backups, here are the steps: Find a good backup. This is usually very difficult as few data backups actually work when you need them – especially tape! This
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadAugust 30, 2013There is a common mistake that many business make when sending marketing or information-based emails: sending out email blasts from their corporate email account to groups in excess of 25 recipients and getting blacklisted. For example, if your corporate email is name@domain.com and you send semi-large to large group emails, you may end up putting your entire email server on a
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadAugust 28, 2013This is the second installment in the backup series, the first being on the use of tape. We are currently in the best place for backups in the 30 years I’ve been doing IT. Disk-based backups are awesome! The best! If you are not on a disk-based backup system, listen up, because this is where you should be. Disk-based backups (unlike
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadAugust 21, 2013You’re going to be hearing a lot on backups in the coming weeks, a favorite topic and one that often is ignored by business owners. Besides the work you perform on your systems, backups are the most important thing you can do to ensure longevity of the business. Studies show that over 50% of businesses fail in the first year
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadAugust 8, 2013In a word yes, and it’s good for our planet too. In doing research for this blog post, I ran across some tips on the Journal of Accountancy Website for green computing. If accountants are concerned about this issue, there must be some cost savings in it! The definition of Green computing as listed on https://www.techopedia.com is: “the environmentally responsible
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadAugust 1, 2013If your company has opened its doors to the use of personal mobile devices, iPads and tablets for work purposes you are one of the many who are beginning to allow them into work. Productivity is enhanced if an employee is comfortable with the devices they are using. However, restricting them to particular business-only devices can thwart morale as well
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadJanuary 16, 2013a continuation from last weeks post, 6-10 of the top 10 IT focus areas for 2013… 6) Virtualization. The days of having an actual hardware server for each business function (file storage, database, email) are over, you can now run multiple ‘virtual’ machines on one server. Virtualization is a big topic, suffice it to say you need to research
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadDecember 15, 2012It’s the new year, and like everyone else I’m thinking about goals and new years resolutions. I thought it a good time to give you-gentle reader-my list of things to do for your systems in ’13. 1) Move backups to a disk based system, that allows the duplication of that data offsite. This past year many improvements have been
Written by HD Tech - Tom HermstadAugust 1, 2011It’s Sunday, and I’m looking outside at the gray ‘June gloom’ day in California, and I’m thinking about clouds. Why not talk about ‘cloud’ backups? Firstly, a quick update on the cloud. The term gets bandy about a lot these days, but mostly its a marketing term, that sounds better than ‘other’s servers hosted on the internet and you paying
