Using our experience of the issues involved in tasks such as Linux installations or disaster planning, we will help you to avoid the pitfalls of these activities. Our organizational skills are also of benefit when addressing upgrades, integration, or migration of existing services to new equipment.
Installation Planning and Issues
Before commencing a systems or network installation thorough planning is necessary.
This will avoid problems during the system installation itself and ensure the best quality implementation. Time spent here reduces the installation time and leads to a more robust and more easily supported service.
Items to consider are:
- Identifying all the hardware and software components required
- Capacity planning to ensure that adequate resources are available for the system load
- For large installations - is the environment suitable for the machines? Is there adequate power and ventilation?
- Where will the equipment be sited? How will the cabling be organized to avoid hazards?
- What is the backup strategy? How quickly does data need to be recovered?
- What data security measures are required? How sensitive is the data?
- How to build in supportability, reliability, and performance through installation 'best practice'?
- How can an upgrade be planned to maintain data integrity and keep downtime to a minimum?
- For service migrations, how can we move the components of the service to minimize downtime?
- What automatic housekeeping routines are required to reduce problems?
- What simple manual procedures need to be put in place to help keep the service running smoothly and reduce support costs?
- How will the system be supported? Local user, telephone support, dial-in access?
Service Migration
Talon can plan the movement of existing services to new machines and networks. We will identify the risks involved and the potential issues that need to be addressed.
Our service includes:
- Identifying the elements of the current setup that are to be retained
- Discussing any new requirements
- Specifying the new components (hardware and software) to meet your additional needs
- Planning the migration plan to minimize downtime and the effect on your business
- Carrying out the migration plan, including all the installations and configuration work
Disaster Recovery Planning
Once a system problem has struck you need to bring your recovery plan into operation. If you have no plans for dealing with these problems (from the loss of a service component through to a full scale disaster) then the time taken to be back online will increase dramatically - you could even find yourself in an unrecoverable situation.
Therefore, you need to identify the risks to your environment and ensure that you have plans and assets (such as backup tapes, copies of software, etc) in place to enable the recovery process. Talon will examine your Linux environment and develop the plans to enable recovery from the risks specified. The changes required to your daily computer operations can then be implemented either by your staff or by Talon.
Contact Talon for more information about how we can assist your business