One of the dirty little secrets of IT is that anyone worth their salt knows that daily server checks are critical in avoiding crashes, outages, and poor network performance, but hardly anyone ever does it. There are only a handful of core items to check (memory, disk space, logs, antivirus signatures, and uptime), but either remoting to the server or physically checking it require a fair amount of time that is compounded by the number of servers. Logging in, opening the appropriate apps and recording the information for each server wouldn’t be so bad, were it not that there are users to support, ongoing projects, and a myriad other matters that require IT’s attention. So in the end, we “satisfice”: the servers are running, so nothing that bad could be wrong… um, right?

We’ve been there too, especially since client needs come before our internal firm needs. We looked into sophisticated monitoring software, but decided that all we needed was a quick way to check core items and log who did the check, when and what issues were found if any. In the end, we came up with Sentinel, which allows us to perform daily checks remotely in one “spot.” Sentinel has helped us shave at least 50% of the time we used to spend on server checks, and that savings increases with more servers. Best yet, the checks get done, which has significantly reduced operational issues overall.

If you are interested in how Sentinel works, we will be having an upcoming webinar next Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 2 p.m. Follow the link to sign-up on the SAGE web site. We also posted screenshots of the Sentinal interface for viewing.