Network management

Your network is a key part of your business IT – system. As a small to medium size business, your computer network allows your employees to accomplish the tasks necessary to your operations. When the network isn’t working, you’re not very productive. Uptime and reliability are very important to even the smallest of companies.

The most valuable and important part of a network is the people who support it – without the proper care and attention, the best-designed networks can fail in their fundamental mission: to serve the user. With normal everyday use, users are added, software is loaded, and changes are made. If you could create a network that never changed, you could keep the cost down for maintenance. However, you wouldn’t get much productivity out of it.

To make sure network management and maintenance tasks are carried out regularly, make someone in your business responsible for them and build the tasks into your company’s schedule. If you leave them until someone has a spare moment then they’ll probably never get done!

Network management tasks are:

Software management
Hardware management
File management
Security management
User management

Software management.

This involves taking care of the software installed on your network. It includes keeping track of installed software, applying any important updates and deciding whether to upgrade when new versions become available.

Hardware management.

You need to maintain the physical equipment which makes up your network. This might involve inspecting servers, cleaning dust from vents and testing key hardware like uninterruptible power supplies and backup drives.

File management.

Particularly important if you operate a central file store on a server, file management involves keeping all the files on your system organized, deleting temporary files and archiving old data so there’s room to save new files.

Security management.

If your business relies on its computer network, then keeping that network secure is very important. Security-related tasks include running and testing backups, regularly scanning for viruses and testing your firewall.

User management.

You can reduce administration and boost your network’s security further by giving employees different levels of access depending on what they need to do, removing access rights when staff leave and controlling what files people can change.

**********

It’s important you stay on top of these things. Performed regularly, network management and maintenance needn’t take a great deal of time or cause much disruption.