Services - Consulting Services

Managed Services | Consulting Services

Technology Consulting

Our thorough understanding of the technological issues allows us to identify trouble spots in an early stage thus helping you to avoid pitfalls, that might stall or postpone your implimentation.

Installation Planning

Before commencing with an installation planning is important. This will avoid problems during installation and ensure a robust implimentation. Time spent here reduces the installation time, and leads to more reliable and easily supported services.

Items to consider

• Identifying all the hardware and software components required
• Capacity planning to ensure that adequate resources are available for the system load
• For large installations - is the environment suitable for the machines? Is there adequate power and ventilation?
• Where will the equipment be sited ? How will the cabling be organized to avoid hazards ?
• What is the backup strategy ? How quickly does data need to be recovered ?
• What data security measures are required ? How sensitive is the data ?
• How to build in supportability, reliability, and performance through installation 'best practice'?
• How can an upgrade be planned to maintain data integrity and keep downtime to a minimum?
• For service migrations, how can we move the components of the service to minimise downtime ?
• What automatic housekeeping routines are required to reduce problems ?
• What simple manual procedures need to be put in place to help keep the service running smoothly and reduce support costs ?
• How will the system be supported ? Local user, telephone support, dial-in access ?

System Installation and Configuration

Building stable and reliable computer servers and networks is fundamental to a quality service that will bring the desired business benefits. Pacific Rim Computer Products provides a complete linux installation and configuration service covering.

• Installing the basic operating system software
• Configuring the servers to operate within your environment (network, user setup, disk allocation)
• Installation and configuration of third party software
• Configuration of layered services such as email, web servers, printers
• Implementation of backup procedure and security measures
• Implementing house-keeping routines and advising on day-to-day support tasks

We will also:

• Help you specify the appropriate equipment and software for your requirements
• Provide capacity planning services to ensure that the system has enough CPU, memory and disk space for its intended purpose
• Upgrade existing operating systems and software
• Review systems/networks and suggest upgrade plans

We also have a number of linux-based solutions for specific tasks such as web serving, file serving for PCs and unix, centralized printing, or to provide network services such as DNS.

Architectural Design

Our expertise in network design and implimentation can assist you in the planning of your implimentation,reducing costs and avoiding suboptimal deployments.

Firewalls and Security

Firewall technology is a hot issue today. Consequently, many people sell firewall products and services. Pacific Rim Computer Products takes a different approach. We feel that a firewall is not just a box that you plug into the wall. For a firewall to be effective, it must be an intergrated solution, consisting not only of hardware and software, but also management procedures.

Some of our reasons for taking this view are:

• The requirements for firewalls differ for almost every customer. Although firewall products out-of-the-box may fill in the average needs, they usually don't cover them all.
• Easy-to-use graphical interfaces for firewalls can easily mislead you. Although you think everything is configured safely, this may not be the case. A thorough understanding of what is really happening is often required.
• Frequently, new applications and accompanying protocols become available on the Internet, which the firewall software does not (yet) handle properly.
• Even more frequently, new hacking techniques are coming up, sometimes requiring re-analyzing the safety of your firewall.

The right solution for any particular customer highly depends on their specific requirements and can range from installing and configuring a standard box, and then handing over the user's manual, to an extensive project, interviewing all parties involved, building custom software running on several separate systems, with considerable on-site training of the staff.

Doing this right requires extensive technical expertise in this particular field. This cannot be obtained by merely reading some product manuals and possibly following a few product training courses.