As essential tools of the IT industry, both physical and cloud computing servers remain delicate, sometimes unpredictable, and often criminally underused. The data they generate, when collected and analyzed, can provide a wealth of useful information. However, server maintenance and data analysis both require dedicated monitoring, tracking, and storage. How can an IT manager balance those needs with costs and benefits? Through the use of a server monitoring service, to collect and collate data and perform maintenance and support as needed. Though there are many different server tools available to perform this function, they all share some basic operations. These operations fall into two main categories: support and tracking.
What supports do server monitoring services offer?
Although there are other ways to provide full-time support to a server, only server monitoring offers all of the most necessary support functions through one system. Whereas in the past a human needed to not only collect this information, but then make decisions and act, the support systems act primarily independently, often off a rule-based system, precluding the need for extra staff or needless delays in the decision-making process. Benefits include:
- Advanced server monitoring alerts to send notifications of issues before users become affected
- Dependency maps between systems to check for potential vulnerabilities
- Centralized view of infrastructure
- Trending and capacity planning tools
- Event handlers to automatically restart failed services
Tracking functionality of server monitoring services
Beyond the support utilities, server monitoring services also offer a wide array of ways to catalog, inspect, record, analyze and make adjustments based on data. Rather than waiting until a critical component fails and then backtracking to endeavor to find out why it happened or how it could have been prevented, the tracking functions allow IT staff to anticipate issues and take action accordingly. The ability to spot and track trends of usage can also provide documentation for needed expansion. More advanced server monitoring services can also gather relevant metrics from Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Rackspace as needed.
Server monitoring services seamlessly connect with new tools
Beyond the support utilities, server monitoring services also offer a wide array of ways to catalogue, inspect, record, analyze, and make adjustments based on data. Rather than struggling to connect to the newest virtual servers or container, modern server monitoring services have these capabilities onboard from day one. As your company or system grows, the monitoring system can and will grow and adapt to suit.
Real-time benefits
Saving time and money is always a bonus, but how does a server monitoring service work out in day-to-day business? The support systems actively assess and prevent issues and, when issues occur, they are managed without human intervention. Live notifications about events can also be sent through a variety of contact methods, email, SMS, or custom scripts so adjustments can be made precisely as they are needed. With impressive data tracking, a real-time picture of usage and metrics can be viewed, live, at any time. All these services may have been available previously, but through expensive, independent systems that were difficult to scale up or apply to virtualization. Server monitoring services offer a cost-effective and powerful solution.
Volico Data Center can assist you in understanding your needs
If you’re ready to see how a server monitoring service can facilitate and smooth your cloud based servers, or physical ones, have one of our friendly experts contact you to begin the conversation. Discover how Volico can help you with all your Server Management and Monitoring needs.
