Computer communications Managing a Network

Managing a Network A computer network needs a great deal of effort to manage and keep it running smoothly. Computer networks often have a network manager who has a number of responsibilities. These responsibilities will include: Backing up data Installing and updating software Replacing broken hardware Monitoring network traffic to make sure the systems can cope with the demand and making changes if they do not.

Disaster Recovery An important job of a network manager is planning for when things go wrong. We are so reliant on computers that if they fail then the jobs they perform cannot be carried out.

Backing Up Computer hardware like hard disks can fail. This would result in the loss of all the data that was on the disk. Backing up means copying that data onto another storage medium such as another hard disk, a tape or the cloud. If one hard disk was to fail and data could be restored from the backup onto a new hard disk.

Grand father, father son Backing up can take a lot of time so this technique is often used to speed things up. A complete back up is done (say at a weekend when the office is closed). As this is a complete back up, it takes the most time. The backups are usually done to high capacity tapes. On the next day only the changes are backed up and not the whole hard drive. This takes significantly less time than a whole backup. If a hard drive crashes in the week then the data can be rebuilt from the master backup and all the intermediate backups that were taken since then.