Staff Augmentation

When a company requires the full-time support of Information Technology professionals and yet lacks the resources necessary to procure this support, the place to turn is to Technology Solutions of Charleston’s Staff Augmentation Service. We provide highly trained certified engineers and technicians with skills exactly tailored to a client’s requirements. We offer engineering and technical services on an hourly, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, or we can provide temporary staff over the course of a project. Our national network coordinates services spread over a large geographic area with a central, local point of contact.  Whether you need several on-site full-time engineers, or just a regularly scheduled part-time technical expert, TSC can assist your technical staffing needs. Our certified engineers work directly for TSC. They receive on-going training, and are backed by the full resources of our entire organization and those of our hardware and software partners. We are not a staffing agency without technical support behind their candidates.

• Network Performance & Analysis (LAN/WAN)
• Workgroup Support
• WAN Management Routers, Switches and Wireless
• Help Desk
• Hardware Warranty Maintenance
• Server & Email Support

Help Desk Services

Technology Solutions of Charleston’s Remote Help Desk Services features flexible coverage designs from 24×7-365 days per year, to ordinary weekday coverage with off-hour coverage by paged engineers 24 hours a day. These flexible arrangements give TSC the ability to develop the best help desk solution for your needs, while providing a superior value for the investment.

Through the combination of Technology Solutions of Charleston’s Eclipse Web Service workflow ticketing, system your calls are constantly monitored, escalated, and never allowed to languish.  Weekly and monthly trouble ticket reporting is produced to your specifications, and live monitoring of trouble tickets is available.  Technology Solutions of Charleston Help Desk Services can also supply you with an accurate asset tracking of your hardware along with upgrade reports when hardware systems are near the end of their productive cycle. This feature can be utilized to effectively plan and budget for your future IT needs.

Other services include support and training on end user applications through the use of remote control applications like PCAnywhere, NetOp and Zen works, server-related troubleshooting, LAN and WAN design, and Citrix server based application support.

 

Our People and Skill Sets

Technology Solutions of Charleston’s help desk staff is well qualified to respond to a wide range of networking IT issues and circumstances. Certifications and Skill Sets include, but are not limited to:

Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) Cisco Certified Design Associate (CCDA) Citrix Thin Client Technology Computer Associates Cisco Works Macintosh OS 8, 9 and X Windows 9x, NT, 2000, 2003, 2008, 3270/5250 emulation

Other skill sets include Project Planning and Management of large hardware and software installations, upgrades, desk-side services, and on-site project based implementation. Custom executive services can be designed to support mobile users and telecommuters from remote locations.

Our experienced staff integrates seamlessly with your existing IT department and become many of our clients’ only virtual IT staff. The TSC Help Desk is a significant resource for the coordination and management of network and IT operations.

 

LAN/WAN Infrastructure Practice 

Technology Solutions of Charleston LAN/WAN Infrastructure practice is designed to provide a complete suite of engineering and management services focused on local and wide area network infrastructure.

Particular service areas within this practice are Network Planning, Design, Implementation, Optimization, and Operations which include performance benchmarking for service level compliance, backbone analysis, topology migration, network disaster tolerance and recovery, remote access systems and virtual private networking.

Cisco, the premier partner in this practice, provides a broad range of network products that can satisfy the requirements of our largest and smallest clients alike.  We also utilize 3Com, Network General, and other leading network infrastructures in our LAN/WAN solutions.

Our certified engineers have extensive experience in these disciplines, with particular attention paid to consultation, research, analysis, and testing of network infrastructure developments and issues.  Our engagement process utilizes experienced, competent engineers, and a proven project delivery management methodology to deliver complete technical solutions to our clients.

 

Remote Access

Our remote access services provide a reliable extension of internal business tools to telecommuters and road warriors of client’s organizations.  TSC is committed to providing the optimal balance of accessibility, security and accountability to ensure that the best interests of the client, their employees and partners are maintained.

            Features

Remote access solutions typically feature one or more of the following:

• Implementation of Web based connectivity for use while traveling or from home
• Configuration of Citrix solutions for e-mail, database replication, file transfer, and connection      to application servers
• Configuration of Windows XP Remote Access Servers Provide secure Internet connectivity      within the office firewall in order to provide access to internal web servers and intranets
• Definition of security considerations of various connection schemes and remote applications
• Implementation of User-to-LAN and LAN-to-LAN VPN schemes
• Configuration of secure access via firewall-protected internet gateways
• Integration of remote access servers with existing directory structures and authentication      schemes.
• Implementation of thin client servers to facilitate remote performance

Benefits

Technology Solutions of Charleston’s goal is to always provide solutions that align with and enhance our client’s business processes. To achieve this, each remote access solution is crafted using client’s internal business process as the master guide. The result is a stable, competent remote working environment that is as sophisticated or simple as our clients internal systems, without compromising the security or usability of the solution. Our LAN/WAN engineers bring years of remote access solution experience to bear on every aspect of your technical requirements from security schemes to modem choices. All our remote access solutions use the most stable technologies ranging from dial-up access servers to Virtual Private Networks (VPN’s) and integrated directory services.  Our implementation services may be complemented by Technology Solutions of Charleston management capabilities and remote support services to further strengthen remote computing capabilities.

 

BackOffice Services

Our focus on behind-the-scenes applications – those that allow information and ideas to flow between users and between businesses – is another part of our promise to exceed your expectations. Whether yours is a start up enterprise designing its first Information Technology infrastructure or a Fortune 1000 company seeking to integrate new technology into an existing IT environment, Technology Solutions of Charleston offers sophisticated, comprehensive solutions to keep your data working for you. We offer dependable solutions using technologies from Microsoft, Novell, Citrix, VMware, Veritas as well as Computer Associates.

• Internet and Intranet
• E-Commerce
• Document Management and Archiving
• Server Consolidation
• Storage Management
• Data Protection
• Server Virtualization
• Microsoft Messaging Services
• Microsoft Application Services
• Microsoft Active Directory Infrastructure Services
• Citrix Solutions
• VMware Solutions

 

Messaging, Spam and Antivirus

You can now have an email security solution that protects, conserves, and helps you manage email system resources. TSC use the preemptive email security program to ensure the detection and prevention of viruses, spam, and phishing. Using products from Postini Preemptive Email, Veritas, Norton AntiVirus/Spam to identify, resolve, and report on email threats. Legitimate email messages pass through to the recipient, while spam is quarantined in a web-based, password-protected message center. Employees can have access to their quarantined email and are able to adjust filters to personal preference.

 

Network Security/VPN

Our partnerships with companies such as Cisco Systems, Citrix, Veritas and Symantec allow us to provide security solutions facing organizations with growing legal and regulatory compliance demands, as governments and the public are insisting that organizations take appropriate steps to ensure the proper use and protection of both corporate and personal information, but demand automated business processes

The network is the foundation for all the organization’s data, applications, and business processes. If the network is not secure, it increases the risk that problems could affect the confidentiality, integrity, and the availability of critical business systems. The partial approach to network security can no longer adequately manage risk across the extended enterprise. A new all-inclusive approach is needed that is integrated, collaborative, and adaptive, and that enables an organization to better manage network security risk and regulatory compliance requirements.

The security of your electronic information is a key issue in protecting your business. The costs of good security are insignificant next to the costs of losing that information. Please contact us now for a review and analysis of your information security.

Citrix Application Delivery An end-to-end application delivery strategy starts with infrastructure products that are deployed in the datacenter, directly in front of applications – controlling the initial delivery of applications as close as possible to their source.

Web Application Delivery To address the challenges of web application delivery, companies need to look to integrated application networking products, such as the Citrix NetScaler product line, which goes beyond traditional load balancing; optimizing application traffic over the network by incorporating advanced technologies like compression, caching, and security.

Windows Application Delivery The Citrix Presentation Server product line offers a far better solution, by installing applications one time in the datacenter and delivering over the network using client-side or server-side application virtualization. This approach dramatically improves the cost, simplicity, and security of managing Windows applications without compromising the end-user experience in any way.

Windows Desktop Delivery A well-designed application delivery strategy should also incorporate Windows desktops, as they represent the primary operating environment through which employees access their applications.   This model can dramatically improve the economics, simplicity, and security of traditional desktop management. The Citrix XenDesktop is one example of a solution designed to address this challenge.

VMware Virtualization

Virtualization is a technology that can benefit anyone who uses a computer. Millions of people and thousands of organizations around the world use VMware virtualization solutions to reduce IT costs while increasing the efficiency, utilization and flexibility of their existing computer hardware.

Top 5 Reasons to Adopt Virtualization Software

1. Server Consolidation and Infrastructure Optimization: Virtualization makes it possible to achieve significantly higher resource utilization by pooling common infrastructure resources and breaking the legacy “one application to one server” model.
2. Physical Infrastructure Cost Reduction: With virtualization, you can reduce the number of servers and related IT hardware in the data center. This leads to reductions in real estate, power and cooling requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs.
3. Improved Operational Flexibility & Responsiveness: Virtualization offers a new way of managing IT infrastructure and can help IT administrators spend less time on repetitive tasks such as provisioning, configuration, monitoring and maintenance.
4. Increased Application Availability & Improved Business Continuity: Eliminate planned downtime and recover quickly from unplanned outages with the ability to securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no interruption in service.
5. Improved Desktop Manageability & Security: Deploy, manage and monitor secure desktop environments that end users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.

Storage Solutions

High Availability

In today’s business world, downtime is becoming more and more recognized as a significant disruption to profit generating activity. High-availability solutions have been available for many years, however; they have been expensive and proprietary, restricting their deployment to Fortune 500 companies. With tailored, cost effective solutions available from key TSC partners such as, Novell & Microsoft, today any company that can measure the cost of critical system downtime can justify the implementation of a High Availability Solution.

 

With TSC’s High Availability Solutions, even small companies can now significantly reduce downtime, capital outlay, and operating costs while receiving the benefits of the latest internet/intranet, messaging, database, and file and print services. Combining industry leading fault tolerant software from Veritas, Legato, Novell & Microsoft with reliable hardware solutions from HP & IBM, enable companies to leverage a robust network environment on which to build workgroup or enterprise level web, Java, and general-purpose applications. In addition, TSC’s high availability solutions promote scalability, higher performance, and, in tandem with other network operating system features, overall network manageability.

 

TSC will evaluate business and technical requirements to build a solution tailored to our customers’ specific needs. Most of our High Availability solutions feature the following:

 

Multiple Servers

For increased reliability and greater performance under all circumstances, Active/ Passive configurations can be used where each active server is mirrored by a ‘passive’ server that duplicates each action of the active server, but does not share the workload.

• Provides Automatic or Manual Fail-over

In our High Availability solutions, fault-detecting software monitors clustered servers over a regular network link, the disk channel, and/or dedicated cluster interconnect link. In automatic mode, when one of the servers is unable to respond over the designated link or channel, the fail-over process is initiated. During the fail-over, client and server-based applications running on the failed server are automatically restarted on the appropriate surviving server. In manual fail-over operations, the administrator is notified of the failure and can assign applications to the appropriate surviving server based on desired performance.

 

Leverages Existing Network Resources

A key advantage of the TSC Clustering solution is that in many cases, you can re-use your existing servers and storage. This reduces your initial investment cost, provided the existing infrastructure does not compromise the integrity of the high availability system. To ensure the reliability of the solution, TSC will provide a thorough evaluation of the existing components before integrating them into the high availability system.

The existing servers can be re-configured to also perform critical application processing with its own set of attached users, making it much more useful than an idle standalone backup or standby server. The high availability solution therefore provides a “bonus” in improved network application performance since the overall network workload is spread across more than one server.

• Allows Scheduled or Unscheduled Maintenance without Network Downtime

High availability simplifies routine but essential tasks such as scheduled maintenance, component upgrades, patch installations and BIOS revision updates. Using the manual fail-over capability, the processing responsibilities can be allocated to other servers while the target server is updated or maintained.  By repeating this in a round-robin fashion, all your servers can be addressed with minimal impact to end-users.

• Protects against Both Hardware and Software Failure

TSC’s High Availability Solutions rely on a set of automated capabilities that allow clustered systems to monitor, manage, and protect resources by proactively adapting the environment in response to sensed events. The goal of adaptive computing is to automate and manage service level availability, by optimizing server resources, and by monitoring leading indicators such as performance; as well as lagging indicators such as error conditions and stopped processes.

 

Storage Systems

The Storage Area Network

A Storage Area Network (SAN) is a secure, information storage infrastructure that allows access to all kinds of data regardless of the operating system or platform. It serves as a high-speed network that establishes a direct connection between heterogeneous storage devices and servers using storage hub, switch and bridge technologies. Typically it is distinct from the corporate LAN/WAN data infrastructure – a ‘network behind the network’ – usually located in the data center but may also be located up to 10km away for improved disaster mitigation.  TSC offers SAN solutions built on components from HP, EMC and Veritas to provide best of breed storage performance.

SAN’s liberate storage from the target server’s bus and enhances the distribution of server clusters. With a SAN, all storage devices can be accessible to all servers, and storage administration becomes easier and less expensive. The Fibre Channel Storage enhances storage and performance scalability by allowing additional storage systems or servers to be added to the SAN as required. As storage units are added to your system, cache and controller processing power scale right along with it – so more storage doesn’t mean sluggish storage. Server and storage system connections to the hubs connect at up to 100 MB/sec reducing potential bottlenecks as storage capacity increases.

 

Typical SAN applications are:

• Off-site backup and archiving
• Disk mirroring to disaster recovery sites for mission-critical applications
• Storage clustering for application scalability and high-availability server clustering
• Remote access to data warehousing with reduced administration costs
• Data intensive applications such as environment modeling, imaging, think tanks, intensive research and multimedia work

 

TSC offers both SCSI and Fibre Channel based SANs that can be used to create distributed workgroup storage area solutions as well as massive enterprise data-center storage systems.

 

RAID Systems

TSC’s RAID Solutions range from small single chassis SCSI solutions for workgroup or small business applications to multi-chassis Fibre Channel solutions for Enterprise Storage consolidation. Raid solutions feature complete I/O analysis to ensure that the components are:

• Single or Dual-active controllers for the highest performance and availability. If one controller fails, I/O processing will automatically fail-over to the other.
• Hardware RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5, 5+0, 6 Decreases the host CPU load with more efficient use of the host/array SCSI bandwidth and streamlining RAID management with a smart cache controller.
• Redundant hot-plug components including controllers, power supplies, cooling, and cache memory for the highest reliability, availability and serviceability.
• Graphical RAID Management for easy configuration, monitoring, maintenance, and tuning.
• Battery backup for cache providing data protection for up to 3 days during disastrous power failures.
• Fibre Channel, Differential Ultra SCSI and SCSI II host interface options for data transfer rates of up to 1000 MB/sec to support even the most demanding environments.

 

Hierarchical Storage Systems

In most computers the virtual memory system is composed of a small amount of primary storage (system memory) that is made to look larger by integrating secondary storage (disk) into the memory subsystem. With a Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) system, this concept is applied to tertiary storage (tape/optical) to make secondary storage appear much larger. Just as the virtual memory system makes it convenient to manipulate large applications, HSM makes it convenient to handle a large amount of data. HSM systems are often referred to as a ‘Virtual Disk’.

 

The key concept behind an HSM is to provide a judicious balance between speed, space and cost. The need for speed is met by keeping active data on fast storage media (disks), while the need for space is met by keeping inactive data on less expensive storage media (tape or optical media). New data entering the system is kept on fast media for fast access. Over time, with less frequent access, this data is migrated down to media on lower levels of the media hierarchy (tape or optical).

 

HSM manages the movement of active and inactive data among the available storage options while making the users think that all of the data is available on a single media platform. Whether active or inactive, all data will appear fundamentally the same to users and their application software.

 

Storage Management Solutions

In today’s high-paced, information-based, competitive environment, businesses are faced with many technology challenges. Companies are dealing with rapidly growing distributed systems, exploding volumes of information, de-centralized control of enterprise technology, and reductions in IT staffs and training budgets. To overcome these challenges, organizations need comprehensive, enterprise-wide solutions. An effective storage management solution must include these five essential elements.

 

• Centralized management of local and distributed storage resources
• Easy integration of critical on-line and off-line storage resources
• Highly available Information
• Scalability and performance
• Support of heterogeneous environments

 

TSC’s Enterprise storage management solutions feature the Veritas Storage Management suite of products with these features:

• Proactive monitoring of all storage, allowing users to automatically tune a system for the right price and the right performance.
• A single, centralized interface from which to monitor and manage storage across a large, heterogeneous, distributed network.
• Policy-based management allowing the administrator to set up business policies that are automatically monitored. If necessary, actions are automatically executed to fix a breach in policy.
• Integrates with storage applications to enable real-time and historical event performance monitoring, allowing a standardized view across the entire storage environment regardless of platform.
• Ensures that all aspects of the environment can be automatically managed from a single centralized console, minimizing application downtime and optimizing data and application availability.
• Instantaneous reporting of status of resources to help determine where problems lie on critical systems.
• Multiple notification facilities.
• Autonomous agents can run and enforce policies independently of the Storage Management Engine
• Proactive fault tolerance to proactively detect and fix storage problems without administrator intervention
• High Scalability/Performance using multiple engines support thousands of nodes to easily scale across the global enterprise
• Heterogeneous support of major UNIX and Windows NT platforms allowing business to choose platforms based on application rather than management requirement

 

Enterprise Backup

Any industry where a significant portion of its revenue depends on access to information is extremely vulnerable to data loss. Industries such as Health Care, Retail, Insurance, Consulting Services and Engineering Design are particularly vulnerable. Across industry segments, companies involved in Electronic Commerce, Automated Document Management, and Workflow; or Educational and Governmental agencies are heavily dependent on ready, reliable access to their data. Clearly, data protection is business protection, especially today, when business has become so dependent upon information.

TSC emphasizes the need to develop, at a minimum, effective backup, retrieval, and disaster recovery programs. At TSC we assist our clients by integrating high-quality backup products with effective operating methods & practices using our customized Professional Services.

This solution incorporates the methods and techniques used to ensure that highly valuable data is protected yet readily available for analysis, manipulation or distribution as required to enhance your internal or external business processes.  The solution is built on capabilities ranging from implementation of single server backup solutions to Enterprise backup solutions featuring redundant high performance tape silo systems, and multi-site Enterprise backup solutions.

Some of the features of our backup solutions are:

 

Backup System Planning & Design

• Local or Distributed Backup Systems
• Single server/single backup device solutions
• Multiple server/single backup device options
• Multiple server/multiple backup device systems
• Multiple site/multiple backup server systems
• Network throughput enhancement to ensure continuous tape streaming
• Processor/memory/IO optimization for backup systems

On-line, parallel backup and restore

• Centralized administration – local or remote
• Broad tape device, auto-changer and library support
• Optional client side data compression and encryption
• Graphical user interfaces provide database administrators with the ability to setup schedules and centrally monitor the progress of backups.
• Scheduled backups for E-Mail systems and other live databases can be easily created using
• Extensive tape media checking and correction
• Disaster Recovery
• Automatic tape cloning for duplicate off-site storage
• Backs up critical system files
• Optional data encryption

Usability

• Full differential and incremental backup
• Point-in-time restore
• Redirected restore
• Local or remote backup and restore

Availability and Performance

• On-line backup
• Supports up to 32 parallel data streams
• Support of up to 16 concurrent tape devices
• Broad auto-changer and tape library support
• Advanced media management, including bar code support
• Optional client side data compression

Server Consolidation

An increasing number of IT directors are discovering that extensive distribution of critical systems have severely constrained the very reason for the original distribution – flexibility. By regrouping groups of dispersed servers, storage and applications on a single large system, companies with overly distributed architectures can regain real flexibility and control of their information system. Consolidation is a sound way to adapt quickly to business changes, slash operating and maintenance costs, and offer enhanced service levels to end-users.

While customers have varying consolidation needs, TSC believes that its consolidation methodology can be beneficial to all medium to large customers despite expected differences in relative, scope, system dispersion or implementation horizon.

Consolidation Methodology:

Phase 1 of the methodology is to centralize server location to two or fewer locations within existing buildings or campuses.  This step allows IT directors to benefit from reduced support costs, increased server-to-server throughput capability at relatively low costs, centralized backup, administration and other automated processes.

Phase 2 features the consolidation of similar processes and common applications on larger more fault tolerant servers.  This leverages technologies available in today’s departmental and enterprise systems by replacing large numbers of under utilized mid-sized servers with efficiently utilize servers sized for specific activity levels.

In phase 3, consolidation efforts are extended to the data storage environment by implementing Storage Area Networks. TSC will migrate key servers to a SAN where common disk arrays are distributed via high-speed data-specific fiber loop networks. These networks feature robust multi-homed capabilities for on line data mirroring and/or redundant disk arrays.

With TSC’s help in moving from a distributed environment to a consolidated disaster tolerant environment, enterprises can regain flexibility in all aspects of their IT operations by maximizing their resource planning capability.

Physical Security

TSC works closely with your IT and security staff to deliver cost-effective solutions from the procurement of equipment to full management of your security efforts. TSC has developed an extremely flexible video surveillance system that can be seamlessly integrated into a wired or wireless backbone system. The iPoint product provides a cost-effective, low maintenance, networked systems with extensive video storage, retrieval, and data manipulation capabilities with real time viewing and video playback options.

Our digital video security and surveillance solutions are scalable to deal with the many sizes and types of facilities in the government and public sector. Regardless of size or geography, our solutions can manage your video security needs. Where appropriate, the individual facilities can be networked together and monitored and managed centrally, helping to reduce staffing costs. Since our solutions are based on open standards, they utilize existing IT and security infrastructures, reducing the costs and complexities of deployment and continued operation.