Maintenance

All equipment, whether it be your car, your house, or your computer, requires maintenance. When maintenance is neglected, reliability decreases and repair costs increase.

The reasons for not performing maintenance are generally time constraints or lack of knowledge on the best way to perform the task (or even uncertainty in what tasks to perform and how often).

Just as with other types of equipment, you can choose to perform the maintenance yourself, learning the skills needed to do so, or you can hire a professional to do the work for you.

Daily Data works with you to provide the level of service you need. If you have the time and inclination to perform your own maintenance, we can act as consultants or trainers to ensure your maintenance plan is right for your facilities. Or, we can perform the maintenance on your equipment for you on a schedule customized for your needs.

If you would rather have Daily Data provide your maintenance, our technicians can perform most of the work remotely, only requiring a visit to your site for any physical maintenance needed. Advantages to having Daily Data provide regular maintenance include:

  • Maintenance History: Daily Data will maintain and provide a maintenance history of all covered systems.
  • Customized: A regular maintenance program tailored to your needs
  • Discounted Labor: 10% discount on all labor not covered by maintenance contract
  • Prioritized Scheduling: Maintenance Contract clients are automatically given priority over all other work.
  • Rapid Response:
    • 1 hour response time during normal business hours
    • 4 hour response time nights/weekends/holidays
  • Server Log Monitoring: Server Logs will be redirected to Daily Data and reviewed for problems (equipment/software malfunction, intrusion detection). This is only available if the server and network connection is capable of sending e-mail to the Daily Data e-mail server.
  • Remote Assistance: Daily Data can install secure remote control software on all covered equipment to allow a more rapid resolution of many problems.
  • Loaner System: In case of failure, a replacement machine will be set up at your location for up to 30 days at no charge, subject to availability.

As stated, maintenance should be customized for the system use, physical location, and inherent security. Additionally, clients may prefer to perform some work in-house. However, typical contracts are priced at:

  • Unix Server – $50/mo
  • Windows Server – $75/mo
  • Apple OS/X Server – $75/mo
  • Workstations – $25/mo

Maintenance is generally performed weekly on Servers monthly on workstations, though that schedule is flexible depending on several criteria. Our senior technicians monitor operating system mailing lists and will modify the schedules based on critical operating systems releases.

Typical work performed during maintenance can include the following:

  • Update Operating System
  • Check hard disk space
  • Update third party applications
  • Where possible, servers will have monitoring software installed. This software determines the status of each individual machine, reporting it to our central repository, where a full history can be reviewed at any time. The server side also flags any system parameters outside of “norms”, and sends a special alert to our trained technicians.
  • Where possible, a summarization of system logs are sent daily to Daily Data, where they are reviewed regularly for any abnormal conditions
  • Check Access Logs
  • Verify integrity of operating system files (Unix)
  • Scan disk for errors (Windows, OSX and some Unix)
  • Defragment file systems (older Windows, OSX and some Unix)
  • Verify functionality of anti-virus and firewall (where applicable)

Additionally, Daily Data can go to your location for physical maintenance of your systems. The schedule is typically every six months, but depends on the physical environment of your location (dust, electrical service, temperature control).