Good morning everybody. This is rance Charlie with Tsi. Um, I did mention in the last IT Services Bartlesvillevideo last show that um, Matt was no longer with us and with that in mind, I have thought of new names. Um, well a new name. I think we’re just going to change it to totally solutions and innovations. I just wanted to let people know that. And today I wanted to talk about proactive maintenance. So we all know that proactive is easier said than done, especially when it comes to uh, uh, computer systems a if everything’s working, it’s the definitely, it’s definitely a last piece. You want to actually stop working, make sure everything’s good. A lot of people don’t even really know where to look. That’s where an MSP managed service provider comes into play. They can monitor your systems and take care of issues before they actually become issues.
And being proactive, especially in a Biz in business is that’s a very strong component of being successful. If you are going to be successful than you are proactive. You know what needs to be done. You get every, you plan your days and your time. Um, and so that you can focus and being proactive is tremendously helpful and mitigating risk and loss. Um, and maintenance, the maintenance by definition is proactive. So maybe this is a, uh, a misnomer, proactive maintenance. So in any case, we well know that makes sense for Okta maintenance, that does make sense as a, as a phrase, as a term. So as an MSP managed service provider, want to try and make that acronym, uh, more accessible. I know a lot of people aren’t too familiar with it. Acronyms. I know if you’re still quite a few that I have to look up every now and then because everybody just makes the assumption, Oh, you’re an ITU.
Okay. You know what this means. Um, no, that’s learning the acronyms has not been a focus of my education in it. So now you guys, uh, proactive maintenance. So the main aspect of this for an MSP is too, is the RMM tool. That 100%, that’s where 99% of the proactive, especially the maintenance aspect of being proactive comes from. We get reports of what pcs and made failed what checks. And on top of that we actually, if we’re not, we should or if him as if your MSP is not, they should most certainly be tailoring that to your, situate your it environment. You know, it’s not a one size fits all. You may have 20 servers and 300 users or workstations that you’re going to need an a more, a different crate set of criteria for monitoring as opposed to somebody with two servers and 10 users or 10 workstations.
So just be aware of that. Um, as an MSP I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be opposed to showing or demonstrating to the client what exactly we’re monitoring, which a lot of them come with summary, like a summary of report. Um, we use solar winds and every month we get an executive, a report kind of showing what, what issues we’ve encountered and what has to, what steps have been taken and how many alerts have been resolved. So it’s, it’s helpful with that regard. Uh, something for servers. You can keep track of, uh, power usage. Uh, power spikes can cause issues. As far as the hardware is concerned. You can, um, you want to keep track of the overall draw, uh, the resource usage, uh, disc’s disk health. And let’s see that, that’s just off the top of my head. Uh, some checks that we do, antivirus checks, you definitely want to check the, that and salt and the, uh, especially for servers, there are certain services that need to be running, uh, like SQL or exchange or I s things like that.
Um, you can also monitor failed logins, um, disc space, uh, critical events. And I’m just kind of running through the list here and once one. Uh, and, and for, for us, uh, we do, we run daily checks. I think that’s pretty well standard across the board when we determine what needs to be checked and what the acceptable ranges are. Like, for instance, a failed logins. If we have, you know, three or four, that’s more than I’d like to see, but it’s, well within the realm of, uh, of normal. I guess if we saw about 50, 60, then that would be, that would be a cause for concern. That is definitely not within the realm of normal. So we would obviously change our criteria, say notify us on more than eight failed logins, uh, letting notify us on 10 plus events and then we can go in and look and see what maybe going on a disk space checks, let us know when so much spaces only available.
Then we can go in and run a couple of tools to clean things up, things like that. So it, it alleviates a lot of issues for the end users because it doesn’t, you can do these, a lot of these changes on the back end. Uh, for instance, we have a remote background which gets us into the command line. You can do probably 99% of things in the command line. You can run powershell, all that good stuff. So just knowing that that’s a possibility. Um, and being aware of, you know, what steps you would take in being proactive, being proactive to being proactive is a tremendously helpful you, you alleviate strain and you keep the client running. They don’t even notice that there’s an issue if you’re doing your job right and you just make sure that you are aware of their environment. For instance, uh, if they have a server that runs a specific uh, like cameras or email or whatever you met you, you definitely want to make sure that IT Services Bartlesville servers, the checks for that server or tailored to what it is it’s running.
Like you want to look for that specific service. If the service goes down, notify me so that we can get in there so that I can get in there and look and see why. So being proactive is, is uh, it’s a hallmark of success not only in business but in life period. Because you, if you’re a reactive person, you, you just wait for things to happen. The successful people make things happen. And as a business owner and a it professional, proactive is really, that’s how I operate. That’s how any business owner who is having, well to some degree, they’re there, they have to be proactive. If they’re not, they’re not going to be a business owner for long. Um, I work with a professional, uh, we’re going to a few professionals and proactive is the name of the game, 100%. They are proactive in everything they do.
They plan out their days, they plan out their weeks, they know exactly what they’re going to do. They do, they plan even the time they spend with their families because if it doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done. And that’s most certainly true, especially if you’re working on trying to expand a business to be successful. And depending on what your goals are. For me personally, being at home with my family, I under, I know that being a business owner, that’s not gonna happen 100% of the time. But especially as an MSP, getting out there and providing it services, it’s, it can be a very time intensive. It can be. And the nature of, uh, being an MSP is that we own the environment of the client. We implement systems and hardware that help us do our job as far as automation monitoring, uh, the correct type of infrastructure, um, ups, battery backups, uh, certain types of workstations, um, making sure they’re not purchased from Walmart or best buy that are actually made to last.
Um, just things like that, being proactive, especially from running the business to, um, meeting weekly on numbers. Uh, I have a weekly meeting with a business coach and you’ve got, um, started dressing things before they really, before they become a huge issue that you have to address. Like, uh, an employee handbook. I don’t have employees that I may have. We may look at hiring somebody, you know, towards the end of the year depending on how things go. But it, it’s, it’s still something I have to do that I want to do and have ready before I even need it. Uh, another aspect of this is doing interviews with people. Like I said, I’m not hiring anytime soon, but being proactive with it, I can look and find those candidates that I feel would be just having people in mind whenever it comes to that. Having the choice. It’s, it’s like having people ready for it to come to work for you and having a choice.
Otherwise you’re going to get to where you absolutely need somebody and then you’ll take anybody and then you’ll be Mt. 10 steps behind where you should be. So just, there’s a lot to be said for being proactive with your business. For some people it’s their baby. Yeah. Pro Hac. If just be proactive, don’t skimp on, uh, it most certainly this, we facilitate. Um, well how are we just really facilitate business as we help keep your business going? We make sure that everything is a functional letting. There’s no downtime that you’re not paying people to sit there while they’re waiting for somebody to show up to fix their computer. And I mean, that’s, I, that’s a huge plus. And being an MSP, you come in, you, you, you know, you have your it services that you offer you and being proactive. You have policies in place, procedures in place for how you do things.
When you do things, why you do things and you can deliver for those clients so that they understand and know exactly what they’re getting. And in some cases under promise and over deliver. That’s another aspect of being proactive. You, you know what you need to deliver to deliver and it’s already to go. You just, you let the customer, let the client know what you’re gonna do and then you, but you have a whole process in place and it’s, it’s going to be streamlined. You, you say, let’s sell, probably take about two hours, you know, whatever it is. Uh, but being proactive, you have those procedures in place, you’ve built that process out. Hopefully before you even done it, you’ve ever done it because you have some experience to draw upon and you get in there and get it done within 30 minutes to an hour, hour and a half, whatever.
Just be proactive and let people just let your work speak for itself because that’s the main thing. And maintenance, just to touch on maintenance itself, it can really mitigate downtime. It’s just simple maintenance. Just keeping track of the disc health. The critical alerts and failed login attempts. Uh, and you know, just anything you can monitor that you see as a potential break point, keep track of it, make sure everything’s okay with it. Maintenance doesn’t happen by itself. It has to be facilitated. So with that in mind, um, proactive maintenance, if you don’t have, if you rely on break fix as a business owner, look at, just talked to an MSP, just see what is, what is available out there, who nuts, maybe your support person offers MSP and they just haven’t brought it up to you. That managed service providers make sure that they, they may not say that they are an MSP, but they may offer monit remote monitoring and maintenance, uh, and can monitor your infrastructure or implement certain technologies that make it a lot easier for you.
And I mean there will be some costs involved, but trust, I mean, trust in the, if the, you’ve had them for break fix for a long time and they uh, they do offer MSP, just trust them. I mean, you’ve, you’ve trusted him so far with break fix. Why wouldn’t you trust the IT Services Bartlesville pros with making sure it doesn’t break in the first place? So just keep that in mind and talk to them. Just find out what they offer and see if there’s anything that they, they do that you, you weren’t aware of. I mean, a lot of businesses change things, progress. So just keep that in mind. All right, well that was a network. I’m sorry, that was a proactive maintenance. I hope you all were able to learn a little bit about it. And I know talking about it helps me understand it more if you want to really understand something, learn it, and then teach it. So I hope, um, hope I’ve opened some eyes today, so I hope you all have a good day and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.