Server Maintenance Checklist

How to maintain a Server in healthy state, so that your organization does not suffer from a catastrophic failure of system? I have tried to summarize a quick checklist.

1.      Keep Operating System Updated

Ensure Server Operating System is updated. Any new patches or updates available should be installed. Hackers like to find and exploit bugs in operating systems such as Windows and software products such as internet browsers and email programs. To protect your Servers from needless downtime, download and install software patches and updates as soon as they become available.

2.      Ensure Security of Server

Check Anti-virus is updated and running. Also ensure firewall is running to prevent network intrusions.

3.      Check event log regularly for abnormal errors or warnings

Keep an eye on event logs. Event logs shall give you information regarding system, security and application related events. You shall be able to track issues pertaining to any of these.

4.      User Rights Should be restricted

Maintain and manage users access rights. Administrator should not log in thru “Administrator” always, should have an alternative login with limited access.

5.      Limit User Disk Space from Server for Each User

Create Disk Storage for Users. If you are Windows Server user you can manage that through “Disk Quotas”.

6.      Disaster Recovery Plan for Server

Disaster Recovery Plan is one of the most important for Server Management. If any time your Server goes down what is the alternate plan that you have? How and within what time frame you shall be able to get operations back to normal.

7.        Data Backup Strategy for Server
How and what information you shall be backing up from Server? You should have a strategy designed for backup and schedule for backup. Scheduling of backup depends on your backup type. For example, if you have Online Backup how often is going to be? What is the retention period for old data? If you are using tape backup or transferring data to another hard drive, you should have strategy decided accordingly. Your backup should be taken every couple of hours if your Server is having mission critical database running.

8.       Physical Security
Ensuring the physical security of your Server computers is a key step in securing the information stored on them. Make sure your Servers should be physically secure in a separate area.

      The following are tasks that can be performed daily, weekly, monthly on

      Servers to keep the system healthy

        Daily Tasks

ü  Backup Server Data

ü  Checks for logs

ü  Ensure Anti-virus and Firewall are functioning

ü  If you are using Windows Server, keep an eye on task manager to

    ensure Server memory and CPU usage are in control. If you see

    any program taking away more resource you should immediately

    investigate.

        Weekly Tasks

ü  Run a quick anti-virus to check critical files

ü  Check Hard disk space

ü  Backup Server Data – Make sure you should have a separate

    backup for each week.

ü  Ensure Optimization of Applications is done, if there are

    certain applications utilizing more memory you need to fix those.

        Monthly Tasks

ü  Run a full anti-virus Scan

ü  Perform restore of your backups to test your data, make

    sure you do not overwrite existing data

ü  Ensure no unwanted software’s or applications are running

Hope the above tips help you maintain your Servers.