Small businesses are an important part of global business. After all, this is what creates most of the new jobs, employment and keeps economies going in most capitalist countries. To ensure the small business runs smoothly, you need to have the right server support or IT infrastructure management.

So what is good server support? Most business software applications run on servers that provide employees with a centralized platform to access information and meet their business needs. This could be payroll software, CRM software, file systems, accounting, human resources, ERP applications, among many other business applications. Applications run on operating systems such as Windows or Linux, and it is important to maintain operating systems for optimal health. This includes properly patching all security vulnerabilities through Windows Updates, ensuring that the server is running the appropriate security software such as firewall and antivirus, and other preventative maintenance items. Preventive maintenance items include removing temporary files and defragmenting the drive on a regular basis.

Talking about the physical conditions for IT infrastructure management, small businesses need to ensure that all servers and racks are kept in proper conditions of temperature, power backup, humidity and away from dusty environment. It is always recommended to have your server under the manufacturer’s or vendor’s warranty, with an expedited replacement service level agreement with them. Any type of hardware failure can happen, and you need to be protected and ensure minimal downtime for your business needs.

The other important thing in small business server support is backups and disaster recovery. This is an aspect that most small businesses completely ignore. It is extremely important to invest in good backup software. Today, there is a wide range of complete backup recovery products available on the market. Bare metal recovery backs up an entire server disk volume instead of just certain files or applications. This makes full disk volume recovery much easier and hassle-free. An additional feature of these products is the fact that they can also perform recovery on different hardware servers. So, if there is a hardware failure, you can simply paste the full recovery image onto new hardware and you’re good to go back online.