IT Infrastructure Management

We offer this service when you already have internal personnel who handle IT administration. Normally such personnel have other responsibilities and do not necessarily have the time nor methodology to perform continuous and proactive monitoring.

i. Servers:

• Proactive monitoring:
  • Availability of physical or virtual servers
  • Disk space
  • Memory utilization
  • CPU utilization
  • Status of Microsoft Windows services
• Periodic checking possibly involving escalation to other support groups:
  • Review of logs & backup reports
  • Checking the status of Active Directory replication
  • Review of event logs
  • Checking security alerts
  • Verifying OS security updates
• Escalation of alerts or incidents to other support groups

ii.

Active Equipment

:

• Condition of switches and routers
• Verification of response times
• Communication and pathways
• Escalation of alerts to other support groups or to the vendor

iii.

Firewall Monitoring

:

• Verification of readiness
• Checking the state of the interfaces
• Escalation of alerts to other support groups

iv.

Supported Platforms

:

Microsoft (Availability, CPU, Memory, Disk, Services) Windows Server Exchange Server SQL Server System Center Lync Server SharePoint Server Other services & applications	Virtualization (Availability, CPU, Memory, Disk) Hyper-V VMware
Unix / Linux (Availability, Disk)	Other devices (Availability, other applicable characteristics)

We offer this service when you do not already have staff dedicated to handling IT administration.

i.

Server Administration

:

These activities are based upon the best practices recommended by the manufacturer. There are many important administrative server tasks and, among them, these are the main ones:

• Proactive monitoring:
  • Availability of physical or virtual servers
  • Disk space
  • Memory utilization
  • CPU utilization
  • Status of Microsoft Windows services
• Resolving Operating System (OS) problems
• Technical assistance for supported platforms
• Regular, periodic administration tasks
  • Creation, setup and suspension of users and group policies
  • Verification and resolution of any problems uncovered by logs or backup reports
  • Checking fault-tolerance and resolving any issues
  • Review of event logs and resolving any problems they might show
  • Review of security alerts and resolving any attempts at breaching security
  • Resolving problems created when applying security updates, like firewall policies, email and web-access filtering, intrusion detection, etc.
  • Performing follow up of alerts
  • Purging temporary files
  • Applying security patches and updates
• Attention to alerts and their follow up
• Escalation of alerts or incidents to other support groups

ii.

Managing Active Equipment

:

• Proactive monitoring of switch and router availability
• Verification of response times
• Monitoring communication and pathways
• Following up on alert resolution
• Escalation of alerts to other support groups or to the vendor

iii.

Firewall Administration

:

• Proactive monitoring of availability
• Verification of response times
• Checking the state of the interfaces
• Incident resolution by remote means
• Following up on alert resolution
• Escalation of alerts to other support groups

iv.

Supported Platforms

:

Windows Server Monitoring Administration (Operating System, Active Directory, Security) Problem resolution Technical assistance Escalation to support teams Proposals for improving processes	Virtualization Hyper-V , VMware Monitoring Administration Problem resolution Technical assistance Escalation to support teams Proposals for improving processes	Unix / Linux Monitoring Escalation to support teams
Other devices Monitoring Basic assistance Escalation to support teams	Other services Verification of backups Checking fault-tolerant devices Checking the state of security suites Performing follow up of alerts	Other applications & platforms Service is offered for other, select applications

Service requests can be originated by several means. Perhaps by a tool that the client might already have (and to which we have access for doing follow up and reporting). Or, they can be originated by telephone or email. In the latter case, icorp will log them and issue a monthly report of the service requests that our remote-enabled teams have handled.

Incidents come to us automatically via monitoring software, or are reported to us by your own IT team. In either case, we use Service Ticket Tracking software to take care of logging them and tracking them to completion. You are not locked into using the icorp Service Ticket Tracking system—we will gladly use whatever system you might already have deployed. Regardless of the system used, we provide you with monthly reports detailing those incidents we have handled.

The IT Infrastructure Management service usually entails the establishment of a customized service-level agreement (SLA), which can define measurable targets for response time and resolution time—each of which can be further broken down by the relative critical nature of each device, platform or service.

As a part of this service, icorp personnel make periodic analyses of the information obtained by the Service Ticket Tracking software in order to draft reports and proposals such as:

• Monthly report of open items, responses to them, and reported incidents
• Monthly report of monitored hardware and software detailing up and down time
• Periodic reports detailing recurring issues and alerts that are still open
• Proposals for improving processes

icorp has strategic alliances with the foremost IT Management solution providers, which keeps us abreast about the latest in technology and methodology.

Some of our strategic alliances are with Microsoft, Fortinet, VMware, CA Arcserve, McAfee, PRTG, and EMC².

At icorp we provide our IT infrastructure management team with continued annual training. The courses are administered in person or remotely according to need. We also have non-technical courses:

Non-technical Training

• Customer Service in a Support Environment
• Business Writing
• World Languages