Weekly Tech Tips
08/15/2023:
Are you at risk of summer thunderstorms frying your sensitive electronics? What is a “UPS” anyway, and why should you use one? How long will your network stay up when the lights go out?
Take a few minutes, grab a coffee, and read through the tech tips we’ve gathered this week – let us know which ones helped you!
What Are The Weekly Tech Tips?
As a seasoned Managed IT Services Provider, we’ve encountered a wide array of IT challenges and innovative solutions. Harnessing our extensive knowledge and experience, we curate the best tech tips each week, tailored for decision-makers, technicians, and everyone in between. We invite you to take a moment and explore the valuable insights we’ve shared this week. Our weekly tech tips post encompass time-saving shortcuts, industry best practices, cost-effective strategies, and IT approaches that fuel business expansion.
If any of our tips prove useful to you, we would love to hear your feedback. Let us know which tip(s) resonated with you and how they helped. We also encourage you to share your own tech tips, so we can consider featuring them in our future posts.
Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality. –Dalai LamaTech Tips: For The Decision Makers
In the ever evolving landscape of business, the responsibilities placed upon business owners, IT directors, office managers, and other decision makers are extensive and critical for success. Not only do they grapple with the relentless demands of day-to-day operations, but also shoulder the weight of shaping their organization’s future through strategic decision-making.
“Tips for Decision Makers” delves into often neglected, yet crucial, tasks and decisions. Our mission is to empower decision makers with insights that can streamline processes, increase IT security, optimize resource allocation, and enhance overall efficiency. The smallest of improvements can yield significant dividends in the long run, which is why our tips address a wide spectrum of challenges and opportunities that decision-makers encounter.
How Old Are Your UPS Batteries?
You might be acquainted with an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), but for those unaccustomed to the term, these devices are pivotal in safeguarding your valuable network and server equipment against potential damage stemming from power fluctuations or complete outages.
The way they work involves the charging of internal batteries during regular building power supply, subsequently utilizing these batteries to maintain a consistent power level for your technological equipment during instances of surges or drops. Additionally, in the event of a brief power interruption, the batteries seamlessly take over, ensuring continued power supply to your sensitive hardware.
While ensuring the proper configuration and functionality of your UPS(es) is critical (regular testing by you or your IT personnel is also a must), it’s also important to note that the internal batteries of a UPS naturally degrade over time. It’s typically recommended to replace these batteries every 3-5 years, with the specific time frame depending on the importance of the connected devices.
Have You Considered a “Failover” Internet Connection?
Almost every business has at least one Internet connection, which typically is a higher cost than a comparable home Internet connection. This is due to business Internet contracts having service level agreements (SLAs) which ensure both consistent Internet speeds – important to make sure you don’t have unexpected slowdowns while trying to run your business – and a fast, prioritized response to get your Internet back up and running whenever there is an outage.
Depending on your business’s nature and its susceptibility to Internet disruptions, it can prove advantageous to consider integrating a supplementary “Failover” Internet connection. This secondary connection can originate from a different Internet Service Provider (ISP) than your primary one, utilize a distinct type of Internet connection such as Fiber instead of Coaxial, or even rely on a wireless cellular Internet connection.
While having a second, “Failover” Internet connection will increase costs, the benefit of having a connection that can be immediately switched to upon loss of your main connection could translate into tangible financial savings. This setup can help your business avoid revenue losses that may arise from operational halts during outages.
Tech Tips: For Everyone
In today’s interconnected world, technology has become an inseparable part of our lives. It influences how we work, communicate, and unwind.
Whether you find yourself in a bustling office environment, working remotely from the comfort of your home, or simply seeking ways to optimize your personal tech experiences, each week we include a range of general tech tips and best practices cater to all these scenarios and more.
Keep Your Internet Running During a Power Outage
Often times when a power outage knocks out your WiFi / Modem, the signal from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) isn’t affected. This means that if you have a dedicated battery back up (a more simplified version of an Uninterruptible Power Supply, or UPS) just for your modem, router, and/or wireless access point, you will still have WiFi.
In fact, with how relatively little amount of power home networking equipment uses, even a $60 battery back up can keep the WiFi on for almost 2 hours!
In areas with poor cell signal, this can mean peace of mind that you will still be able to communicate via Internet connected devices during a power outage.
Additionally, you can also invest in separate, higher-capacity battery backups for desktop computers, monitors, TVs, and other devices. This not only shields these devices from power surges but also keeps them up and running on battery power during an outage. For home desktop computers this can give you the time needed to safely save and close out of any important files and shutdown the computer before the battery power runs out (preventing data loss or damage).
Easy Ways to Recycle Old UPS Batteries
You’ve taken the proactive step of safeguarding all your sensitive and critical electronics with appropriately sized battery backup units. However, when the inevitable moment arrives to replace worn-out batteries, what should you do? While cautious handling is necessary to avoid sparks or injury, the internal batteries are designed for user replacement. This means you can effectively prolong the lifespan of your battery backup unit without the need to invest in an entirely new one.
Most battery backup manufacturers, such as APC, often offer complimentary battery recycling programs. The process is simple: complete the form, print the shipping label, pack the old battery securely, and send it in for recycling.
Alternatively, you can explore options like local electronics retailers or your county’s recycling center. Be sure to research any restrictions, costs, or guidelines before disposing of the old batteries to ensure a seamless and responsible recycling process.
Tech Tips: For The Techs
The best techs are those who generously share the valuable tips they come across every day. This culture of knowledge exchange fosters growth and equips everyone to face new challenges.
When one tech invests a substantial amount of time in solving a complex issue, passing on the solution to their peers becomes a priceless time-saver for anyone encountering a similar problem. We believe in the power of collaboration, and if you have any tech tips you’d like us to share, we encourage you to leave a comment!
Troubleshooting Slow Internet After a Thunderstorm
After a late-night thunderstorm causes surges, outages, and potential damage, your top priority is swift restoration. Once you’ve inspected all your networking gear, servers, and applications, and determined that all is well, you return home to get back to bed.
Come Monday, a barrage of issues surfaces: slow cloud-hosted software, video conferencing glitches, buffering music streams, and more. If this rings a bell, there’s a chance you’ve been affected by a power surge through the ISP’s cable modem that damaged your firewall’s Ethernet port, thereby throttling your Internet speed.
The quick fix can often be reconfiguring an available port on your firewall to act as the new WAN interface, and the long-term fix is to replace the unit under warranty (you do have it under warranty…right?). As far as preventing this from happening in the first place, a coaxial surge protector can sometimes prevent this occurrence, as can ensuring that all your equipment (including the modem) is properly installed and grounded.
Add Temperature and Humidity Monitoring to Your UPS
Incorporating temperature and humidity monitoring into your UPS units is an important step in ensuring optimal operational conditions and safeguarding your critical systems. Firstly, this integration enables you to respond to any deviations from safe temperature and humidity ranges within your server environment. Being able to initiate a graceful shutdown of servers when your server room is severely outside of safe environment parameters could help you shield your valuable hardware from potential damage and prevent data loss.
Additionally, the inclusion of temperature and humidity monitoring allows you to leverage the alerts system that your UPS system already offers for various events, such as battery failures, power outages, or self-tests. This reduces the complexity of your alert configuration, which can increase the reliability.
The benefits extend beyond real-time alerts. By employing monitoring tools, you gain access to historical insights into the fluctuating conditions of your server room over time. This facilitates the identification of trends, patterns, and potential issues (such as large, repeated variations in temperature and humidity), helping you improve your server room environmental management strategies.
Adding on temperature and humidity monitoring often is as a cost-effective enhancement to your existing UPS setup. With the potential to prevent downtime, equipment damage, and data loss, this relatively low-cost add-on emerges as an investment that safeguards the longevity and reliability of your vital systems.
Who is Cyberficient?
More than just a catchy name, Cyberficient is a customer service focused Managed Services Provider (MSP) made up of seasoned tech professionals who pride themselves on being what your company deserves – the best of the best.
Our focus every single day is on our clients. We provide the guidance, support, and security in all aspects of technology that our clients need to succeed. Our guiding philosophy is that we’re not happy until our clients are happy. The growth and stability of your business is the cornerstone of our success.