Consulting Services

My Critical Alerts service is a managed service offering which can be used to monitor servers in your environment which are running Windows Server 2008 or higher and optionally have SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 installed on them.

A light weight software package is installed on the servers which reports back daily as to the state and general health of the server being monitored.  This provides an ongoing configuration assessment which allows for minimal exposure after important updates are released.  The software package also monitors for human error type problems when a server may be accidentally misconfigured in such a way that violates best practices.

Below are just a few of the over 70 conditions which will trigger alerts:

• An Active Directory domain controller is not replicating data to other domain controllers.
• Active Directory replication failures.
• Incorrectly set auditing settings
• Misconfigured SQL Server database shrink settings
• File system errors
• SQL Server Database Corruption Settings not set correctly
• SQL Server Databases not being backed up
• SQL Server Database corruption errors

When errors are raised for monitored servers an alert is raised and the error is then reviewed.  After the alert has been reviewed the response will be decided upon by you when you initially setup the service.  We can contact you either via email or via phone to advise you of the error, or we can VPN into your network and begin resolving the issue as part of a prearranged consulting service statement of work.

Rates for the Critical Alerts service are $199 to provision, setup and configure the monitoring service which includes one month of monitoring for that machine.  After that monitoring of each server is only $99 per month.  If you have several machines which need to be monitored be sure to ask about the multi-server discount which can lower your per machine rates even more.

For smaller companies who have a few servers this sort of service is critical.  At this price the cost is much less expensive than having a consultant come onsite several times a month to check the servers logs for errors.  If you were to use a consultant to do these checks you wouldn’t want them done very infrequently so the longer these problems go unfixed the more at risk your company is.

For larger companies that do have an IT person on staff this can free up your staff so they can work on project which help your company grow instead of simply reading through error logs looking for problems.

For more information about the Critical Alerts service please email me and I’ll get you a quote and schedule a time to connect to your servers and install the needed software package.

Updates to the Critical Alerts package are included when the monthly monitoring is current for the server being monitored.  As new alerts are added into the alerting package your servers will be automatically monitored for these new alerts.

A very popular consulting offering is the SQL Server Health check.  When brought in to run a health check against a companies SQL Server I run a compressive script which verifies a large number of settings and configuration options which are set on the SQL Server to ensure that they are set according to best practices.

Additionally various performance metrics are analyzed to ensure that the SQL Server is running at it’s peak performance.  Problem points are identified and are reported back to the client.

At the completion of the SQL Server Health Check process all the issues which are identified are documented into a report which is handed off to the client which the client’s DBA staff can use to correct the issues.  Of course I’ll be happy to continue on and implement the solutions to any problems which were found.

Pricing for the SQL Server Health Check is fixed at $399 per SQL Server Instance which is analyzed.  To schedule your SQL Server Health Check please email me and we’ll get some time scheduled.  It takes a few hours of me being connected to the SQL Server instance to gather the data required for analysis. After the data has been gathered I’ll take the gathered data offline and analyze the data then write your personalized report.

A health check of a vSphere or Hyper-V environment involves checking the overall performance of the enenvironment including real time metrics as well as using historical data as captured by your vCenter and/or SCVMM platforms.  This sort of health check is a good double check to ensure that your enenvironment is running as smoothly as you think that it is, especially when you do not have a full time virtualization expert on staff.

During the health check process the CPU, memory and disk metrics are reviewed looking for high load on any of the monitors as well as over subscription of resources as well as ensuring that the system will maintain high availability in the event of a host failure.

At the completion of the vSphere / Hyper-V Health Check process all the issues which are identified are documented into a report which is handed off to the client which the client’s staff can use to correct the issues.

Pricing for the vSphere / Hyper-V Health Check is fixed at $399 per host computer (the machines which host the virtual machines) and requires a couple of hours of time being connected to the host machine to gather the servers metrics. After the data has been gathered I’ll take the gathered data offline and analyze the data then write your personalized report.  To schedule your vSphere / Hyper-V Health Check please email me and we’ll get some time scheduled. All health check work is done remotely at a time which is convenient for you.

A health check of your storage environment involves checking various metrics regarding your storage array platform.  Performing a comprehensive health check requires that your storage array has included performance monitoring tools provided by your storage array vendor.  The metrics which are monitored during the health check process will depend on the storage array which is used.

As a part of the Storage Array Health check the SAN fabric will also be examined to ensure that it is setup as per industry standard best practices.

At the completion of the Storage Health Check process all the issues which are identified are documented into a report which is handed off to the client which the client’s staff can use to correct the issues.

Pricing for the Storage Array Health Check is fixed at $599 per storage array.  To schedule your Storage Array Health Check please email me and we’ll get some time scheduled.  The health check typically takes about 2 hours per storage array to gather the needed data from the storage array. After the data has been gathered I’ll take the gathered data offline and analyze the data then write your personalized report.  All health check work is done remotely at a time which is convenient for you.

Are you planning on moving your systems to another facility? I’ve got a lot of experience moving companies into and out of a variety of hosting solutions.  There are a variety of hosting options available to companies, which simply aren’t known to a lot of people.  There are managed service providers available, there are CoLo facilities where you lease or purchase equipment and host it within the CoLo facility, or you can move the hosted services into the server room or data center within your office facility.  No matter the data center move project, I can help you run through the project from beginning to end.  No major data center move should be done without an experienced person involved to help guide you through the process.

If you are thinking about moving, or just want to see if moving is something that you should look at get in contact with me and we’ll discuss your options and make sure that you are using the correct solution for your company in its current size as well as where you are planning on taking your company over the next few years.  When it comes time to do the migration project I can assist you with getting your Windows Servers, Microsoft SQL Servers, VMware or Hyper-V hosts as well as your Storage needs built up at your new site and assist you with migrations with minimal down time to complete the migrations. I have extensive experience moving companies into or out of facilities such as RackSpace, Cogent, Net2EZ, and Genesis Hosting to name just a few. As a vendor neutral consultant my goal is to complete a successful migration not to guide you towards any single hosting provider.

The most recent migration that I ran moving a company from a managed service provider who had 10 servers at the managed service provider with a single 1 TB Microsoft SQL Server Database and 4 TB of unstructured file system data.  The migration was completed with less then 2 hours of downtime on the night of migration, and no downtime leading up to the night of the migration.  When all was said and done the company saved $20k per month by moving into a CoLo facility on purchased equipment.