Amber Consulting

THE COMPANY...

At Amber Consulting...

... we focus on maintaining and managing small IT departments, remotely.

Description:

For small businesses that have an in-house server with 10 or less attached PCs/devices such as a printer, we offer a tiered service to maintain and service the network remotely.

Our expertise is with Microsoft Windows and Windows Server 2003/2008 environments. We will need to do an initial assessment to ensure we are in agreement with the needs for your particular establishment but recommend at least an initial 1-3 hour meeting to determine and agree to the terms and conditions required.

First Tier: x

Included in our regular remote service offering are the following with a billing amount of one hour per week. These services are performed once per week remotely.

1. Server:

Remotely access the server in a secure fashion to:

Review event logs for messages indicating required follow-up activity. Examples include failing services, hacking attempts, hardware errors.

Check available Virtual Memory and take action to correct depleted situations, and track down programs and services which are fragmenting and leaking memory. This can include restarting applications, services, and booting the server.

Verify disk capacity and trends. Ensure that temporary files and queues are cleaned up.

Delete and add network ids and passwords as instructed by client.

Check success of automatic updates or perform manually. Keep the server absolutely up to date.

Verify success of backups.

Verify functioning and results of virus scans.

Manage private and shared folders for users.

Document activities on a weekly results sheet.

2. Workstations (up to 9):

Remotely access each workstation in a secure fashion to:

Review event logs for messages indicating required follow-up activity. Examples include failing services, hacking attempts, hardware errors.

Verify disk capacity and trends. Ensure that temporary files and queues are cleaned up. Log on to User’s Outlook and empty deleted items folder and run archiving.

Check success of automatic updates or perform manually. Keep the workstation absolutely up to date.

Verify success of backups.

Verify functioning and results of virus scans.

Manage private and shared folders for users.

Document activities on a weekly results sheet.

3. Router and Modem:

Remotely access the modem and router to ensure that firewalls are correctly set up. Adjust Public/Private IP filtering as required.

4. Printers:

We can verify connectivity of network attached printers but little can be done remotely to address jams, incorrect functioning etc.

5. Email and Phone Support:

Up to 15 minutes per week.

Note: Services outside the regular offering are described below.

Email:

We do not support in-house email but will assist in dealing with issues regarding your outsourced email provider.

Notes/Exclusions:

These services are available only remotely to keep the costs down. While much of the maintenance and checking is performed after hours, it may be necessary to have someone on site to verify power-on, do a hard power off boot or the like. Our experience is that this is a rare event and can easily be coordinated.

We recommend outsourcing email and do not support servers which host email.

Debugging servers can be complex and when a failure or a successful hack has occurred, repairs are best made by certified server personnel. We will, in the event that a situation requires it, engage the services of a certified Windows Server professional at the client’s expense to rectify the situation. In the twelve years we have been maintaining servers, this has happened twice.

Any non-Microsoft software installed on the servers of PCs is beyond the scope of our service but we will consider software with which we are familiar.

Most weeks these activities will run smoothly and can be done in an hour. When events occur, such as server issues that need time to analyse, we can do a preliminary analysis without extra billing. Usually we can resolve anything minor.

Extras:

This plan can lead to extras, including tracking down identified problems, phone calls and emails for support issues. Where these issues exceed the plan maximum (15 minutes per week) additional time will be billed at the agreed hourly rate (minimum half-hour increments).