13 Housekeeping

 

This chapter covers

  • Maintaining hardware
  • Monitoring the health of your platform
  • Backup and restoration techniques
  • Adhering to your budget

Managing the health and ongoing maintenance of the enterprise or platform is something we take for granted. We spend all this effort in the design, build, and deployment, but sometimes we forget what it takes to keep the lights on, head off any potential problems, and create an environment where, should something go off the rails, recovery is available.

In this chapter, we are going to touch on some of the higher-level areas that have caught out many CTOs. They will most likely be obvious procedural items, but sometimes, even the obvious things are overlooked. For example, many of us believe we are fully backing up our platforms, but when was the last time you actually tried to restore a system? How sure are you that the backup has covered everything you need?

As we touched on technical debt being produced when developing code, technical debt can also occur if you are not keeping an eye on the enterprise or platform as a whole. Keeping the platform serviced so no surprises pop up is an often-overlooked role.

13.1 Managing hardware

13.2 Support contracts

13.2.1 Providing support

13.3 Monitoring

13.3.1 Outside looking in

13.3.2  Inside looking in

13.4 Backup and restoration

13.4.1 Frequency/retention

13.4.2 Archive security

13.5 Budget oversight

Summary

Checklist