May 30, 2010
May really came and went. It seemed as though our move and build-out made time speed up for the most part. Looking forward to the beach months, although I will be less available this year with everything we have going on. However, I make it a priority to put work down for the weekend and we generally spend time at the pool club in Holmdel, NJ with the kids. They just love it. Really the spotlight of the month was my oldest son’s birthday. Santino turned 4 on the 29th, and those that were following our newsletter from the beginning will appreciate some of these photos, since I started the written letter just about 4 years ago. 
Picture to the left is my youngest Deeko, my niece Nicolette, and Santino the birthday boy. It was a great day at the bounce house. I had a few cigars and the day was a hit. I just can’t believe I have this 4 year old that reminds me so much of myself. I know I’m in for it since my mother’s wish will eventually come true. You know which one I’m talking about. It was that time when you were young and you did something to upset your mother beyond belief. She turned to you and said “you wait until you have kids, I hope their just like you”! Now does that ring a bell? I haven’t met anyone yet that’s told me the curse wore off just in time, so I figure I’m in for it. Comment below for advice or if you know just what I’m talking about.
We’ve gained quite a few followers since then and have come a long way. We truly owe all of our success to our clients. We now have loyal ODS Managed Services clients in their 5th year of service. A client retention better than 98% and referrals that come in telling me how their colleague spoke to them about AMRCON for an hour about our quality of support. We really do want each and every client to be 110% satisfied with our service, our quality and professionalism. I know this is my personal page, but this means alot to me, making it personal! My humble thank you to all that have joined us along the way.
May brought closure to some pretty stressful matters, with that always come new ones. Yes, you heard it, I too can have stress. Although I’ll never show it, lol. At some point in my life I realized the need for balance. Without it we suffer and so will everyone around us. When someone asks me what I think the key to my success is, I’ll tell them spiritual, emotional, and physical balance. Some people call it various things, but for me that’s what it boils down to. I found it all made sense when some of the most successful, fulfilled, and happy individuals I knew followed some form of this unwritten law. Years ago I adopted it and can never go back. I thought I’d toss this in because it’s really how I hold together through anything put in my way. That’s what was on my mind for May.
June is just going to be terrific. AMRCON has so much going on from our Partner program continuing to excel, our ODS Managed Services trademarking, the new office, some great case study work coming soon and so much more. Keep tuned in – Dee Rudko, CEO
May 27, 2010
As networking equipment and servers become more powerful, and costs begin to rise on their support contracts, the environment is usually the last item that is budgeted for. Today, small businesses utilize spare closets, medium businesses may have a dedicated equipment room, and larger corporations will have a custom built data room. As we safeguard our investments against file viruses, email spam, and internet hackers, we have seen in our experience, that the actual monitoring of the network room, is usually sub-par.
Although you don’t need to have an entire Cloud System in your office or a VMWare infrastructure running a server farm, most company’s will have an Active Directory Domain Controller, Email Server, and possible a dedicated File Server. While we pour resources and funds into the server management aspect to ensure we can work, and communicate, we sometimes don’t stop and realize the very basic health of the room:
(1) Multiple extension cords, surge strips, overloaded electrical outlets.
(2) Servers and Network Equipment dispense great amounts of heat that need an escape.
(3) Do we really know how much time is left on the batteries (if any at all).
Utilizing the best equipment, requires the best monitoring to ensure that your systems stay online without downtime. When installing any of the different models of APC Symetra units (Batteries, KV Power Modules, Environmental Modules), they each perform a different function and safeguard. The batteries allow the run-time to increase if you lose electrical connectivity in the building, the Power Modules increase the load capability of the unit, and the Environmental Modules monitor temperature and humidity in the room.
By accessing the web based interface of the APC/UPS Network Management Card that installed in the unit, you have a dashboard of the health of the environment at your fingertips. You can instantly see the Equipment Load, Battery Run-time, Temperature and a slew of other usual monitoring. The application allows you to setup multiple server monitoring, graceful shutdown thresholds, and the most important feature is EMAIL notification or SNMP alerting. If the device switches to battery, you are notified; if it gets too hot; you are notified. Data can be damaged if servers just power off. Equipment can be damaged if the AC unit fails or overheats.
As equipment is an investment, so should the proactive monitoring.
For a walk-through of our new data center, feel free to contact us at AMRCON, and we can schedule a meeting.
May 18, 2010
The new ODS “Virtual System Administrator” interface is almost ready for live launch. We have spent months preparing, building and testing the new function ability of this state of the art server. The entire environment is built on the proven technology of 64bit platform of Windows Server 2008, and utilizes the database scalability of Windows SQL Server 2008.
We decided to install on a HP DL380 server, Dual XEON processor, 10GB of Memory, and 2 RAID arrays, as this is a powerhouse of hardware, capable of handling some of the most system intensive programs.
The Graphical User Interface has been completely redesigned. The module tabs and function lists have been combined into a single expandable-collapsible explorer like navigation pane
Some of the new features include “Users, Scopes and Roles”, for added security and access for Master Administrators, Consultants and End Users. Computer groups have also been migrated into Organizations, Machine Groups and Departments.
The Info Center includes a new function called the INBOX. The inbox holds messages generated by other users or by the ODS System. Much like email, you can use it as a method of system notification or to communicate with other ODS users.
Your Complete Remote Access Tool
With a goal of minimal user interruption Live Connect gives you the tools to do anything and everything you can imagine with an agent, directly.
Complete Agent Data including procedure history
- Audit Information
- A robust drag and drop file manager for transferring files to and from the agent
- Command Prompt
- Remote Registry Editor like regedt32.exe
- Task Manager to see running processes and resource consumption
- Full Featured Event Viewer
- Ticketing interface to update active issues directly
- Chat for IM like conversations with the agent user
- Desktop Access for full interactive remote control of the agent
- Discovery is a tool to sweep the local network(s) of the agent and discover all network nodes
- Video Chat allows for fully interactive face to face video chatting with the agent user if their machine has a camera
24x7 Monitoring and Self Healing
Vendor management and liaison services.
Helpdesk and Onsite Support.
Security, Back up and Disaster recovery.