When we tell Langley & Surrey business owners that Raxxos provides “24/7 monitoring” as part of our managed IT services and IT support, most people picture someone sitting in a dark room staring at screens all night.
That’s not really how it works.
Let me show you what’s actually happening behind the scenes at Raxxos when you’re home sleeping and we’re watching over your business technology from our office in Cloverdale, Surrey.
What Monitoring Actually Means
Think of it like a really smart security system for your technology. Except instead of watching for burglars, we’re watching for signs that your computers, servers, and network might be getting sick.
Your computer is constantly creating data about how it’s performing. How much memory it’s using, how hot the processor is getting, whether the hard drive is responding normally.
We capture all that data and feed it into monitoring software that knows what normal looks like for your specific setup.
When something starts looking abnormal, the system alerts us immediately. And I mean immediately – usually within minutes of a problem starting.
A Real Example From Last Week in Surrey, BC
Last Saturday at 2:47 AM, our monitoring system detected that one of our Surrey, BC client’s servers was running low on disk space. Not completely full, just getting close.
Most businesses wouldn’t notice this until the following Monday when employees started getting error messages trying to save files. By then, people would be frustrated and potentially losing work.
Instead, our technician got an alert on his phone. He remotely connected to the server from his location, cleaned up some old log files, and scheduled a proper disk cleanup.
The business owner never knew anything happened. His employees came to work Monday morning and everything worked perfectly.
The Types of Things We Watch For
Our monitoring systems track hundreds of different metrics, but here are the big ones that actually matter for your business…
Server Health
- Is the server responding to requests normally?
- Are all the important services running?
- Is memory usage climbing toward dangerous levels?
- Are there any failed login attempts that might indicate someone trying to break in?
Network Performance
- Is internet speed what it should be?
- Are there any devices on the network that shouldn’t be there?
- Is the firewall blocking suspicious traffic?
- Are backups completing successfully every night?
Individual Computer Issues
- Hard drives showing early signs of failure
- Software that’s stopped responding but hasn’t crashed yet
- Security updates that failed to install
- Antivirus software that’s stopped working
The Stuff That Breaks Gradually
This is where monitoring really shines. Most technology problems don’t happen suddenly – they develop slowly over weeks or months.
Your server might start taking 5% longer to respond to requests. Then 10% longer. Then 15%. By the time you notice it’s slow, it’s been degrading for months.
Our monitoring catches that 5% slowdown and alerts us to investigate. Maybe the hard drive is starting to fail. Maybe there’s a memory leak in some software. Maybe the server just needs more RAM because your business has grown.
What Happens When We Get An Alert
Let’s say it’s 3 AM and our monitoring system detects that your email server isn’t responding properly.
The alert goes to our on-call technician’s phone. They get detailed alert that tells them exactly what’s wrong and how urgent it is.
They can usually tell immediately if this is something that needs to be fixed right now or if it can wait until morning. A completely down email server gets fixed immediately. A server that’s running a little slower than normal might get investigated first thing in the morning.
If it needs immediate attention, they connect remotely and start troubleshooting. They have access to all the diagnostic tools and can usually fix the problem without ever coming to your office.
This is different from basic IT support where you have to call and wait for someone to get back to you. Our Langley & Surrey tech support team can address issues immediately, often fixing problems before they affect your business operations.
Most of the time, your email is working normally by the time you check it at 7 AM. You never knew there was a problem.
The Difference Between Monitoring and Checking
Some IT companies will tell you they “monitor” your systems, but what they really mean is they check on things once a week or once a month.
Real monitoring through our Langley & Surrey IT support services is continuous. Our systems check your servers every few minutes around the clock. If something goes wrong at 11:47 PM on a Saturday, we know about it by 11:50 PM.
We also keep historical data going back months. So when something does go wrong, we can see exactly when it started and what might have caused it.
Why This Prevents Bigger Problems
Here’s a story that shows why monitoring matters for Langley businesses…
One of our clients runs a small manufacturing business in the Township of Langley. Their main server handles inventory, order processing, and payroll – basically everything important for their growing operation.
Our monitoring started showing that the server’s main hard drive was developing bad sectors. This wasn’t causing any problems yet, but it was a warning sign that the drive might fail soon.
We scheduled a hard drive replacement for the following weekend. Ordered the new drive, backed up everything, and our technician drove over from Cloverdale to swap it out on Saturday morning.
The old drive completely failed two weeks later. If we hadn’t been monitoring and replaced it proactively, that Langley business might have been down at a critical moment.
Of course they had backups, but not all backups recover immediately – it could have been an hour or two to restore it. And honestly, most IT companies don’t check backups often enough. That’s why we even monitor our backups. Our top -ier backup systems actually simulate a backup recovery every single night! But that’s for another article.
What We Don’t Do
We’re not watching your personal stuff or spying on your employees. The monitoring systems only look at technical performance data.
We can see that someone’s computer is using a lot of memory, but we can’t see what websites they’re visiting or what documents they’re working on.
We can see that your email server processed 347 messages yesterday, but we can’t read any of those messages.
The monitoring is focused entirely on keeping your technology healthy and secure, nothing else.
The Tools We Actually Use
Our monitoring software runs in the cloud. These systems connect to small monitoring agents installed on your computers and servers.
The agents are lightweight – they use less resources than a typical web browser. You’ll never notice them running.
They collect performance data and send it back to our monitoring servers every few minutes. If the internet connection goes down, they store the data locally and send it once connectivity is restored.
We use different monitoring tools for different things. Server monitoring, network monitoring, security monitoring, backup monitoring. Each tool is specialized for what it does best.
The Human Side of Monitoring
Even with all this automation, there’s still a human element. Our technicians review the monitoring data regularly to look for trends and patterns.
Maybe your server CPU usage has been gradually increasing over the past six months. The individual daily increases are too small to trigger alerts, but the overall trend suggests you’ll need more processing power soon – especially important for growing Surrey, BC and Langley, BC businesses that are scaling up their operations.
Or maybe we notice that certain types of network errors happen more often on rainy days. That might indicate a physical cable problem that only shows up when moisture gets into something – not uncommon in our Pacific Northwest climate.
This kind of pattern recognition helps us prevent problems before they become emergencies.
What This Means for Your Langley or Surrey Business
The goal of all this monitoring isn’t to impress you with fancy technology. It’s to keep your business running smoothly whether you’re located in Willoughby, Cloverdale, Newton, or anywhere else in the Fraser Valley.
When your employees come to work in the morning, their computers start up quickly. The network is responsive. Email works. The database is available. Everything just works like it’s supposed to.
You don’t get surprise IT emergencies that shut down your business for half a day. You don’t lose important data because a hard drive failed without warning. You don’t have angry customers because your payment processing system went down during the lunch rush.
The Real Value for Local Businesses
Most businesses in Langley, BC and Surrey, BC think about IT support as something you call when things break. But monitoring flips that around – we fix things before they break.
Your employees stay productive because their technology works reliably. You avoid the stress and cost of emergency repairs. You can plan IT upgrades and maintenance during convenient times instead of dealing with crises.
Since we’re located right in Cloverdale on the Surrey & Langley border, we can respond quickly for any on-site work that might be needed. But most of the time, our remote monitoring and repair capabilities mean problems get solved before you even notice them.
When we tell you that Raxxos provides 24/7 monitoring for your business, we mean that your technology is being watched over by professional tools and experienced technicians around the clock.
While you’re sleeping, we’re making sure you’ll have a good day at work tomorrow.
