Establishing an on-premise IT setup is a big task for businesses, particularly when dealing with physical servers, networking equipment, and software infrastructures. It’s easy to get tempted to jump start the project, but following the necessary pre-steps will ensure the setup is done right the first time.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses tend to make oversights which result in increased costs, inefficiency, and even downtime. This is in addition to the mounting common errors made during the IT environment setup.

Setting up a small office network or a large-scale data center requires thoughtful fore-planning and precision. In this article, we will highlight the most common oversights while setting up on-premise IT and discuss how better choices can lead to a more robust and scalable infrastructure.

Not Having A Clear Estimation on Capacity Requirements

When it comes to making IT infrastructure decisions, one of the biggest pitfalls is failing to accurately estimate the capacity requirements for business operations. Cutting corners on purchasing servers and networking equipment typically ends up hurting performance later down the line.

Not planning for the future could lead to expensive upgrades later, or even worse, systems could go down because there isn’t enough computing power to meet the need.

How to avoid this mistake:

Make complete plans and examine your business requirements like the current and projected number of users, the traffic load, software needs, and growth in the foreseeable future before buying hardware or setting up the network. From the beginning, set up modular servers and cloud-ready hardware and make sure to pick systems designed to scale. This will be cheaper in the long run.

Failing to Consider Security When Designing a Network

Effective communication between systems in your IT environment depends on efficient data flow. Poor network design often leads to congestion, slow speeds, and unreliable connections all of which can lower productivity and harm business operations.

Common network design errors include insufficient bandwidth, poor placement of network devices like switches and routers, and lack of consideration of security when segmenting the network.

How to Avoid This Mistake:

Carefully plan your network design. Think about your current needs as well as future requirements. Make sure you have enough bandwidth to accommodate current workloads and future demands. Additionally, build redundancy and load balancing to mitigate bottlenecks and enhance network performance. From a security standpoint, limited sensitive area access improves cybersecurity with network segmentation.

Overspending With Inadequate Risk Analysis

Risk analysis is an integral component of cost control in mitigating risks. Efficient risk management directly correlates with the optimally low total cost of ownership a business can achieve. Ignoring risk analysis in flexible business scenarios can lead to overspending. 

Ignoring risk management can result in business losses because spending is not controlled and monitored. Neglecting risk management too provides an organization with high-risk exposure, which can worsen the impact of financial damage.

How to Avoid This Mistake:

Control spending and maintain a balanced budget by incorporating risk management strategies. Establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) that allow the implementation of primary vital controls over direct costs. Reduce overspending while enhancing operational agility to avoid frequent restructuring that often results from insufficient resource allocation.

Not Having Effective Data Backup and Recovery Plans

Data can be lost due to various incidents such as human error, machine failure, or cyberattacks. From a company’s perspective, not having a backup or disaster recovery plan is extremely costly and detrimental to the business.

Many organizations fail to provide “off-site backup solutions” which puts their data at risk and increases the chances of data loss.

How to avoid this mistake:

Create a plan to have data backups performed regularly and saved on-site and off-site to reduce the chance of losing important information. Regularly test the backup and disaster recovery plans to confirm that they can be put in place and used efficiently whenever necessary.

Purchasing Equipment without Thorough Assessments

Ignoring thorough business equipment assessments can lead to poor business performance. Choosing cheap alternatives or disregarding long-term business goals can cause permanent damage to the business.

Purchasing addition consumer-grade equipment such as computers and peripherals can lead to increased costs due to reduced system stability and reliability, as well as increased incompatibility with critical software.

Avoiding these mistakes:

Assess both long-term value and compatibility before acquiring any new hardware or sofware. Always select enterprise level software and hardware as these are built for scalability, performance, and reliability. Additionally, all parts of your IT infrastructure need to work together seamlessly to avoid conflicts and inefficiencies.

Disorganized Documentation and Process Standardization

Not having proper documentation and defined workflows is a common blunder IT setups make. Managing, troubleshooting, or scaling an environment without proper documentation becomes a daunting challenge. Moreover, Inconsistent practices for configuration or management can add unwanted complexity when updates need to be implemented.

Avoiding these mistakes:

Every aspect of your IT environment needs comprehensive documentation. This covers network diagrams, lists of hardware including specs, software configurations, and documents specifying processes, like step-by-step instructions for recurring tasks. Implement standardized policies for all departments so that all IT practices become easier to maintain, consistent, and faster to troubleshoot when issues arise.

Overlooking Energy Efficiency

In the case of IT environments, energy efficiency remains a key concern that is frequently neglected. Electricity is consumed by servers, network gear, and even cooling systems, all of which can be optimized for energy efficiency. This not only increases the operational costs but also increases the carbon footprint of the organization.

Avoiding this Mistake:

Implementing an on-premise IT environment requires the selection of appropriate hardware and effective cooling systems that provide maximum energy efficiency. Select computers and peripherals that meet energy certification standards such as ENERGY STAR. Also, devise a strategy for managing power during low demand periods. Additionally, cooling systems should be improved with hot aisle/cold aisle containment methods to reduce energy expenditures.

Not Performing Comprehensive Tests Before Full Deployment

Using an IT environment without going through proper testing processes can create all kinds of problems once the system goes live. Many companies seem to hurry through infrastructure, application, and system testing because they need everything ready, resulting in sluggish performance or even outages.

How to avoid this mistake:

Check the entire IT setup before implementing it organization-wide. Conduct performance, security, and stress tests to uncover any underlying issues that may exist within your infrastructure. Additionally, backups and the entire disaster recovery processes need to be tested to ensure functionality during emergencies.

Not Planning for Future Scalability

On-premise IT setups often forget to plan for future scalability, this can be one of the most underestimated components of such systems. Companies frequently concentrate on immediate requirements and neglect to anticipate future growth, and this often leads to a major bottleneck later when the IT infrastructure becomes outdated or inadequate.

How to avoid this mistake:

To ensure proper scaling of the IT environment, spend on modular hardware components and software tools that offer flexibility and can adjust with the growing needs of the business. Virtualization can also prove beneficial by optimizing hardware resources and accommodating additional servers or applications as necessary. Also, incorporate the ability to plan for increased capacity and assess new technologies that could provide better performance or efficiency.

Conclusion

When building an on-premise IT setup, an organization must avoid mistakes. If the setup is fully scalable, secure, and well documented, it can serve as a reliable baseline on which a business can thrive in the digital world. Avoiding these basic IT setup mistakes not only prevents issues related to performance and downtime, but it also ensures that IT infrastructure backup systems can handle the rapid increase in demand expected from company growth.