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Some simple rules to ensure your computers have the best chance of providing a reliable and trouble free working environment.

• That server drives are defragmented on a regular basis: be it once a year, once a month (probably adequate) or once a week. Failing to do this will certainly affect performance in the long run.
• That service packs are up to date. This will affect overall stability, performance and vulnerability to virus attacks. All current Microsoft systems have the facility to do this automatically and whist a few years ago the perceived best practice was only apply a service pack if you encountered a problem: the prevalence of virus and “bot” automated hacking attacks from the net mean keep up to date or be hijacked.
• That current drivers are installed for hardware. These are normally available on the hardware supplier web site. They often lead to significant performance gains.

A point to note is that when Microsoft tests applications: they do so against the current service pack. 

All our tests are carried out on up to date (fully service packed) machines. AvaPA performance is only measured for the current service packs. We require our customers to be up to date in this respect.

Prior to any install we request that machines are de-fragmented, hardware drivers are up to date, and all current service packs applied.

The exact order in which these processes are carried out is not usually critical, however we would recommend:

• De-fragment the hard drive(s) once.
• Apply any hardware drive updates
• Apply any operating system service packs
• Apply any application service packs.
• De-fragment hard drive(s). This process should be repeated until there is little or no fragmentation.

We recommend that current antivirus software is installed and that it is configured to exclude the database files which cannot contain viruses.

Also that a hardware firewall is implemented between your network and the internet. Any ports that are not required are disabled. Any passwords that needed are changed from the default supplied by the manufacturer. There are automated hacking attacks which just look for gateways and router with default password setting which they know from manufacturers’ published data.

If you think its difficult to find default passwords: Google for “default passwords” or

click on this link if you are lazy!

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