Some small businesses are hesitant to move toward a server-based network. Not taking advantage of the benefits a server could bring to a small business could impair its productivity and its growth. So the biggest thing about having a server really has to do with the reliability with it because servers were really made to be able to manage data for multiple users. It has a lot of redundancy, or they can have a lot of redundancy features.
For instance, in a laptop or most desktops you can only have one hard drive. In a server, you can have multiple hard drives on there. So as you're writing data to one hard drive, you're also writing the exact same data to another hard drive or even multiple hard drives. So this way you always have multiple copies of your data in case you have a failure. Another thing you can do with it is a lot of servers also come with redundant power supplies for the same reason. If your power supply goes out on your desktop or laptop you're pretty much gone.
Well, the same thing with the server on here, you can have redundant power supplies in servers. If one goes out, you basically have a back up on another one. Now that you're clear on the benefits of a server, you need to decide what type of server would best fit your business's needs. One of the resources we have nowadays on the dell.com website under the Small Business segment, we have what's called the Network Learning Center, which is something we just launcheded a few months ago. What is, what we found is a lot of customers, they don't want to be experts about technology, but they at least want to know enough about why they're buying it and what it's doing for them.
Once they go there they have a little bit of an idea what they need, and our Dell representatives are more than happy to continue that conversation and help them choose exactly what's right for them. There are many options available to small businesses once they've decided to buy their first server. Companies like Dell offer direct services where a representative will visit your small business to help you evaluate your current and future server needs as your business grows.
Before the server is purchased, if you're still not comfortable with exactly what you're looking for, we do offer services such as a network assessment where we can send somebody on site and just do an entire assessment of your environment, everything from things like where the plugs are, where the wires should be running, the proper cooling as well if it's going to be in an isolated area and just figure out exactly if your environment is fit and if there's anything you need to do within your office to do that.
Once your first server-based network is up and running you're not left high and dry if any difficulties occur. After you purchase the server, if you have a problem with any of the servers you always have our tech support hotline that's available, and that's available on every single server. For some servers the standard is for one year. For some it's three years. It really depends on what you want to do.
It's a free phone call to talk to them. They'll do diagnosis and troubleshooting with you. If, for example, let's say they determine you have a bad hard drive, they can go ahead and dispatch a hard drive the following day, or we have some service plans where they can dispatch it within four hours as well.
Those are obviously for the more machine critical types of environments. We do also have a Web support options where they can go online and if somebody wants to do their own troubleshooting they can go on to support.dell.com and see what options are available there to help them troubleshoot.