Task 3 - Routine performance management activities

Task 3 - Unit 5, D1 (Justify the inclusion of routine performance management activities within a network managers role) [George King]

Regular maintenance activities.

Backup and restore files.

  Organisations will routinely back up files with in its network to an off-site location. These systems will either take physical copies of the files or move them to an off-site location, or they would take a virtual ‘image’ of the networks files. These files well then be updated when the next back-up is completed, this will mean an organisation can have the very latest of its files restored in the event of a failure.

 

 A reason that organisations will take copies of its files and resources is that it will be used to restore a network in the event of a system failure. If the networks became corrupted, had been lost or stolen - copies of the files will be reinstated back into the network so that an organisation can carry on with its business. This being said, an attack on a network that does not have backed up files to an off-site location can be costly and even dangerous to an organisation. If the information is lost completely, (due to not having back-up systems)

User account creation and deletion.

  One of the routine maintenance activities undertaken by administrators is to create and delete user’s accounts; this will also include allocating permissions to individual accounts. Large organisations will often have to add and delete multiple accounts at the same time, this is done because they will need new accounts for employees and will delete older accounts.            

  This regular activity within networking systems has to be routinely done to ensure that all employees within the organisation have access to network resources and tools. If this is not routinely it can result in outdated accounts, employees not having access to network resources - or if there are accounts that are unused it may take up unnecessary resources.

Design and develop login scripts.

  Continuing on from user account creation, an additional useful tool that can be used by network administrators is login scripts. These are used to make the process of altering permissions and managing groups of accounts on a network more simple, along with these options to be centrally controlled by the administrator. Additionally, these scripts are programmed to run when a user logs onto their account, meaning the environment of the users network will be configured upon logging in.  Once the script has been written, it can be changed with ease to best suite the administrators needs, for example; changing specific permissions of groups of accounts contained within the logion script.

 

  With the primary role of login scripts to make the task of managing accounts easy and more controlled, having these scripts in place with do just that. The main advantage of using login scripts is that they can be used for numerous accounts, meaning an administrator only has to change the script in order to change multiple user accounts environment. An organisations network administrator that does not choose to use scripts would have to manually change each other accounts individually - along with not having the centralised control that login scripts offer.

Virus scans.

 Various software tools are used routinely by administrators to perform certain tasks, one of which is essential to an organisations safety is virus scanning software. This works by scanning through all of files stored with in a server, and then checking to see if files look suspicious. Often, software such as this will have the ability to perform ‘quick scans’ ,this will search a smaller but more specific part of the storage drives; for example, files that are downloaded from the internet. Alternatively, a ‘full’ system scan will search every file located on each drive of the server.

  For a network to stay secure and working correctly, it must routinely run virus scans – this is done to remove any viruses that will cause (or already have caused) harm and disruption to a network. Additionally, most virus scans have the ability to delete any malicious or suspicious content found, thus keeping a networks resources free of viruses. If administrators do not routinely scan for viruses, this can potential disrupt services and cause un-told damage to an organisations network.

File clean-up.

To best make use of storage spaces with in networked servers, administrators will routinely run software that will look for files that are un-used or no longer needed - It will then permanently delete this files.  An example piece software used by administrators on Windows operating systems is 'Disk Cleanup,' this uses a simple one-click option allowing for unnecessary files to be deleted permanently with ease.

  Files such as; temporary internet files and other dump files use storage space that could be used for other useful files need to be deleted in order to make for a more efficient network. Therefore, this clean-up of temporary files are routinely done to best maximise the storage capacity of the network, along with making file search more fast (as there are less files to search through.) One the other hand, due to storage space being an expensive necessity used in networks today, not removing unwanted files would be a waste of organisations resources.