The Dangers of a Neglected Server

Your computer network is vital to your business continuity. Every component plays an important role, but it is your server that is the heart of your network, pumping data to all of your company's computers. You take care of your heart, are you taking care of your server?

Like a heart, a server that is neglected will wear down and perhaps even crash. Signs of a neglected heart tend to creep up and catch victims by surprise (heart attacks, more like heart ambushes, em' I right?). Signs of a neglected server can be more easily detected by just looking at it. If your server is showing any of these warning signs, then you need to give it some attention, stat!

A Whole Mess of Cables
One of your first clues that will tell you if your server is neglected is to check on the status of the cables. If the cables are haphazardly plugged in and tangled into each other, then this could spell bad news for your machine, not to mention that they look bad. One of the risk that messy cabling creates is cords that lay in front of the server's fans. A blocked fan can cause a server to overheat and could lead to a crash. Additionally, the worse the wires are tangled, the more time it will take a technician to sort through it. This could turn a small issue into an expensive one. This is an unnecessary expense that could have been avoided with good cable management.

Walls and Dust
A cable that blocks an air vent is a bad sign, but not as bad as the entire side of a server pressed up against the wall. Servers need unhindered air circulation in order to stay cool; every server should have several inches between its vents and the wall. If the airflow is hindered by a wall, or even from dust that has accumulated over time into a solid layer, then your fans will be useless and all of the heat your server makes will sit inside of your box, putting your information at risk.

One thing that dust, messy cables, and walls all have in common is that they are easy warning signs to spot. In fact, it is hard not to look away from a server that is neglected. You can easily remedy a server that is coughing up dust and has wire tangles just by unblocking the vents and bundling your wires together in an organized manner.

For any server health issues that are not obvious, like hard drive failure, malware, and bad sectors, we can catch all of these with our remote maintenance and monitoring service. We are the kind of IT Company that would not leave a poor server in poor condition. In fact, we make sure to blow the dust out your server with compressed air every time that open a unit up, and all of our techs are too OCD to let a cable tangle go untangled. If you suspect that your server is showing signs of overheating, or it is not performing like it used to, then call Preferred at 708-781-7110 and let us serve your server.