What Managed IT Means Here
Most small businesses do not have an IT department. They have a file server that someone set up years ago, a firewall nobody has logged into since it was installed, a backup job that may or may not be running, and a handful of Windows machines that get patched when somebody remembers. That works until it does not, and the day it stops working is usually the day it costs real money.
Managed IT is the arrangement that prevents that. I manage and maintain the whole stack on an ongoing basis: the servers, the hypervisor they run on, the network gear in front of them, the workstations behind them, and the backups underneath all of it. Patching happens on a schedule instead of on a panic. Monitoring tells me a disk is filling up before a user tells me the system is down. When something does break, the person fixing it already knows how your environment is wired, because he wired it.
I am a solo operator, which cuts both ways and I would rather say it plainly. You will not get a rotating ticket queue or a tier one script. You will get one engineer who remembers your subnet layout, your license renewals, and which application the accounting team refuses to give up, reachable around the clock through an answering service that routes straight to my cell. For a business running somewhere between five and fifty seats, that trade is usually the right one.
What Is Covered
The scope below is the default. Every environment is different, so the agreement gets trimmed or extended after I have looked at what you actually run.
Servers
Windows Server and Linux administration. Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, file and print services, group policy, IIS and nginx. Role installs, migrations between versions, and decommissioning boxes that are past their useful life.
Virtualization
Proxmox VE host management, including migrations off VMware. VM provisioning, resource allocation, snapshot policy, storage layout, and consolidating a room full of aging physical servers onto one or two properly specified hosts.
Workstations
Windows desktop and laptop builds, imaging, domain joins, printer and driver management, application deployment, and the ordinary daily support that keeps staff working. New hire setup and departure lockouts handled the same day.
Network and Firewall
Barracuda firewall configuration, UFW and iptables rules on Linux hosts, VLAN and switch setup, wireless coverage, and Cloudflare in front of anything public facing. Rules get documented, not left in someone's memory.
Remote Access
Site to site and client VPN tunnels, Remote Desktop Services session hosts, gateway and licensing configuration, and multi factor authentication on anything reachable from outside the office.
Backup and Recovery
Local plus offsite backup for servers, VMs, and file shares, with retention that matches how far back you would actually need to go. Restores are test-run on a quarterly schedule and the result is logged, because an untested backup is a hope, not a plan.
Monitoring and Patching
Uptime, disk, memory, service, and certificate expiry checks with alerting. Operating system and firmware patching on a maintenance window you agree to, not whenever a vendor decides to reboot your file server.
Hosting and Web Stack
cPanel, CloudPanel, Plesk, Enhance, and CyberPanel administration. SSL certificates, mail routing, DNS records, PHP and database upgrades, and the site itself if I built it.
How Onboarding Works
No contract starts before I know what I am taking on. The first phase is discovery and it is worth doing properly even if we never sign anything after it.
Audit
I document what exists: hardware, operating system versions, license state, network topology, firewall rules, backup jobs, and every recurring bill attached to it. Most audits surface at least one service still being paid for that nobody uses.
Stabilize
Before anything gets modernized, the urgent items get fixed: unpatched internet facing services, missing or failing backups, expired certificates, firewall rules that are wider than they need to be, and single points of failure with no spare.
Run
Monitoring goes on, patch windows get scheduled, and a written runbook covers how your environment is built and how to recover it. Then it is ongoing support, with a planned upgrade path instead of emergency replacements.
Cost reduction is part of the job, not a separate pitch. Duplicate backup products, per seat licensing on software half the staff never opens, a dedicated server sized for a workload that outgrew it in the other direction, and hosting spread across four vendors with four renewal dates are all common. Consolidating those usually pays for a meaningful share of the support itself.
Infrastructure I Actually Run
I do not subcontract the technical work. The systems below are ones I built and maintain myself, and they are the same practices I bring to a client environment.
Server Builds
Bare metal Proxmox hypervisors through to cloud VPS instances, each with hardened SSH, firewall rules, automated backups, and monitoring from day one. Hosting panels, reverse proxies, and systemd service deployment across the stack.
Infrastructure & DevOps
The wider operations layer: Synology NAS administration, automated git workflows with post receive deployment hooks, CloudPanel management, and custom tooling that removes manual steps from a release.
Self Hosted Gitea Server
A private git server at git.myseodesk.com hosting production repositories with webhook integrations and automated deployment pipelines. A working example of moving a recurring third party subscription onto infrastructure you control.
Coverage Area
Based in Lynchburg, Virginia, with onsite work across Central Virginia including Forest, Bedford, Amherst, Roanoke, and Charlottesville. Remote support for clients nationwide, since most of this work does not require standing in the server room.
Need Managed IT Support?
Tell me what you are running now and what keeps breaking. A 24 hour answering service picks up and routes straight to my cell when something is down; scheduled work happens in agreed windows. I am based in Lynchburg, onsite across Central Virginia, and remote for clients nationwide.
Get in Touch