On the 7th of each month, all RevITup Business Care clients recieve a special delivery in their email box.  It is the monthly Executive Summary, a easy-to-digest, single page review of all the key service metrics for the previous month.  We thought it might be helpful to review the highlights os you can get the most out of this useful report. 

 The Executive Summary is broken in to four sections.  Each section based on a separate set of metrics.

Section 1: The Magic Pyramid – Network Health

This odd looking pyramid is based on three main metrics, Up-time, OS, Drive, and two additional metrics, Patch and Backups.  Of all of these metrics, Up-time is the most visible (and important). Up-time is simply that, the amount of time your server has been online and available as a resource. The metrics for Drive and Patches both carry similar weight. The Drive metric is based on available space per drive, stand-alone or RAID. The Patch metric is the only metric of the five to include desktops. Both of these will be discussed in more detail in their respective section. The final two are the OS and Backups metrics. OS carries the least amount of weight, but is another indicator of how old or close to End of Life your servers are. The Backup metric is important as it reports on how successful each backup was, but is not as important if you employ one of The Launch Pad’s RevITup BDR (see BLOG ENTRY: XX ). At a glance, as long as you see the Network Health above 90%, your infrastructure is running efficiently.

Section 2: Space Matters – Server Disk Space

This horizontal bar graph offers a no frills snapshot of your server(s) drive space. Anything over 70% and you need to start worrying. Drives are meant to operate most efficiently when there is enough room to move less accessed files to the inner part of the disk and the most accessed to the outside of the disk. The reason why? Physics. I could explain in long drawn out boring details of how a spinning disk spins faster on the outer edges than on the inside, but I will spare you those details. What really matters is most of the time, once the disk reaches over 70% capacity, the server and disk lose the ability to move those least accessed files to the inner portion of the disk. Thus, your files are accessed more slowly and your server has the potential to run slower as well.

Section 3: Lock all the doors and Windows – Computer Security Patches

Why does this metric report on both desktops and servers, while the rest of the metrics are only reporting on servers?   Simple, you can lock all your doors but if you leave one window open a thief still has the potential to enter your home. The same can be said about your computer infrastructure (you are only as strong as your weakest link). Your server can be locked down tighter than Fort Knox, but if your desktops have the openness of Woodstock (the 60’s Woodstock) than ALL your data is at risk. Patches need to be applied to both the desktops and servers in order to prevent vulnerabilities. When reading this pie chart, make sure Fully Patched makes up the vast majority of your pie. Occasionally though, there will be some patches missed. Most often than not, these are laptops. This is one of the key reasons The Launch Pad requests that desktops and laptops be left on and connected to the internet. If the machines can’t access the internet, we can’t patch them.

Section 4: Where did all my users go? – Bandwidth Utilization and Top Websites

Bandwidth today is cheap. That’s a good thing. The question now is where did my users go? Was it for work or was it for personal reasons?  With this section of Executive Summary, the top ten websites visited by your organization will be shown and how much bandwidth was used during a particular day. Want a more detailed report? Want to make sure that your associates’ streaming audio isn’t taking over the bandwidth your Exchange (email) server needs? Want to see the websites each user visited? Try the Launch Pad’s Web Sentry appliance.

Conclusion:

The Executive Summary provides a quick and easy look at your overall IT infrastructure health.  From server up time, to the top ten websites your associates visit, the Executive Summary provides you with your IT infrastructure at a glance. This will allow you to easily see if there are any areas for improvement, or what to expect in the following months (new purchases, upgrades) when used in conjunction with your Technology Road Map. When more detailed reporting and monitoring is required, The Launch Pad offers additional services and appliances such as the Web Sentry appliance.

Accessing Your Executive Report

1) Login to the portal with your username and password

2) Select Reports on the left toolbar and then Executive Management Report