What is IT monitoring?
Understanding IT monitoring and server monitoring
IT monitoring involves tracking the performance, availability, and security of IT systems, networks, and applications. IT teams rely on advanced tools to collect and analyse data, receive alerts, and promptly handle incidents. The goal is to keep business operations running smoothly, and essential services available.
You can’t skip out on server monitoring if you want a high-performance, secure IT setup. With effective monitoring tools, teams can get real-time data and quickly address potential issues. It’s important to use either monitoring approach to keep critical applications and services running, with no downtime.
Infrastructure Monitoring
The main aim of infrastructure monitoring is to oversee the performance and availability of all IT components – servers, networks, and applications. IT teams rely on specialised tools and software to continuously monitor data, find issues, and improve overall performance. This type of monitoring, like the ones we’ve mentioned before, is designed to keep business operations running smoothly and provide top-quality service.
Server monitoring best practices
Tip 1. Avoid metrics bleed
For larger infrastructures, the high volumes of metrics generated can make it difficult to generate actionable data. This is often referred to as ‘metrics bleed’. When setting up your own server monitoring, you should assess whether this could be an issue now or in the future. Some monitoring platforms include tools for tracking and analysing data, which gives you a clear idea of your infrastructure's performance.
Tip 2. Develop an effective alerting system
As we touched on above, monitoring servers effectively can allow you to step in quickly when needed. Setting up a good alerting system is key, otherwise your alerts might be ignored, or get buried in piles of emails. Your alerting system needs to be able to sort alerts based on how serious they are and send them to the right person or team using various channels (not just email), so they can be fixed quickly by following the right steps.
Tip 3. Select the right server monitor and dashboard
While building your own monitoring tools in-house is totally doable, there are already a few open-source solutions out there that greatly simplify things for your business, including:
- Scollector
- Telegraf
- Snap
- Beamium and Noderig
- StatsD
- Collectd
Each of these has its own pros and cons, so check them out before making up your mind. Specifically, consider which data you want to track and how you want them shown. You should be able to see how your servers are performing at a glance. You can install any of these on OVHcloud dedicated servers, since you have full root access as a user.
However, bear in mind that OVHcloud relies on its own internal server monitoring system. This makes it super easy to monitor a server’s performance in real-time with important metrics like CPM, RAM, and disk space. At OVHcloud, we have two types of monitoring in place that keep the customer solutions hosted in our datacentres healthy and working properly:
- Host monitoring – managing the physical hardware.
- Application monitoring – monitoring the solutions hosted on a server.
This means if you ever decide to move from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, or our datacentres, you can still monitor your systems as usual.
Selecting the right IT monitoring software
Picking the right IT monitoring software is key for ensuring top performance. Seek out tools that provide in-depth data analysis, instant alerts, and strong automation features. Having efficient software is crucial for managing your IT infrastructure, monitoring applications, and fixing issues. You also need to choose the right software and figure out how to get started.
Server monitoring with dedicated servers
Dedicated servers offer key benefits when it comes to peak performance and reliability. Using the latest tools and software, businesses can easily monitor server performance, handle infrastructure, and quickly solve problems. This all-in-one approach helps keep important apps running smoothly, improves visibility as well as overall IT management. With a dedicated Bare Metal server, your monitoring solutions will always be available, and your logs will be secure and easy to access.
How to get started with Infrastructure monitoring
To begin monitoring infrastructure, first identify key performance insights and critical components such as servers, networks, and applications. Use reliable tools and software to collect data, set up alert systems, and analyse performance. Regularly review collected data to optimally manage infrastructure and troubleshoot issues.
The future of IT monitoring
The future of IT monitoring hinges on advanced automation, stronger security, and easy integration with observability platforms. With the introduction of new tools and technologies, users can enjoy better insights, faster response times, and all-in-one solutions for handling complex infrastructure.
How IT process automation speeds up your digital transformation
Automating IT processes is a must if you want to speed up your digital transformation journey. Businesses can be more efficient, avoid errors, and concentrate on strategic projects by automating repetitive tasks and workflows. Automation tools help keep track of performance, handle network and server problems, and provide real-time data for smart decision-making. With automatic alerts and better visibility, important apps and services can stay up and running, even during peak times. Investing in strong automation solutions not only boosts visibility, but also makes incident response and problem-solving easier, setting the stage for future growth.
Optimise your server monitoring with OVHcloud
OVHcloud offers fully featured solutions for managing, monitoring, and optimising your servers. Take your server monitoring to the next level with the advanced tools and services offered by OVHcloud. A solid monitoring strategy is essential for monitoring your servers, networks, and applications. This is why OVHcloud gives you the tools and services to monitor your server effectively – so your IT infrastructure remains reliable and efficient. Get real-time insights, improve performance, and make your IT infrastructure more secure.
Outshine your competitors by investing in the right monitoring tools to speed up your digital transformation.
Your questions answered
What is the role of IT monitoring?
IT monitoring plays a vital role in maintaining the performance and availability of IT systems, networks and applications. These require constant monitoring and analysis of data to quickly identify and resolve problems. Taking a proactive approach that identifies and addresses issues early on minimises downtime for uninterrupted business operations.
What is system monitoring in IT?
System monitoring in IT refers to the process of overseeing and managing the health, performance, and availability of computer systems and applications. It involves tracking system metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, and application performance. Monitoring tools help IT teams find issues and resolve them to maintain high availability.
What are IT monitoring tools?
IT monitoring tools are software applications designed to track and analyse the performance, availability, and security of IT infrastructure. These tools give you up-to-date data, send alerts for anything unusual, and provide insights with dashboards and reports. They help IT teams manage servers, networks, and applications – and fix issues quickly.
What is network infrastructure monitoring?
Network infrastructure monitoring involves overseeing the performance, availability, and security of a network’s components, including routers, switches, firewalls, and other devices. Monitoring tools collect data on network traffic, bandwidth usage, and connectivity issues. IT teams then use this data identify and resolve problems, optimise network performance, and ensure reliable communication within the organisation.
How do I monitor an infrastructure project?
You can monitor an infrastructure project by tracking various data and indicators to ensure it doesn’t go off schedule or over budget. This means keeping track of resource allocation, project milestones, and risks. With project management software and monitoring tools, teams can gather data, draw up reports, and make adjustments to keep projects on track.
How do I monitor data infrastructure?
You can monitor data infrastructure by tracking the performance and security of data storage, processing, and transmission systems. IT teams use data infrastructure monitoring tools to collect data on storage capacity, data transfer rates, and system health. By analysing this data, they can detect and resolve issues, ensure data integrity, and optimise the performance of databases and datacentres.
What should you monitor in IT monitoring?
To effectively monitor IT systems, pay attention to server performance, network traffic, application availability, and threats. Proper performance requires tracking metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, network latency, and error rates. Monitoring tools should detect any strange activity and get rid of them quickly.