The Importance of IT Infrastructure Monitoring

For a service to be more resourceful and resources to be better utilized, IT monitoring becomes indispensable for business. The information technology the environment is becoming more important every day, as more and more IT is directly related to corporate business.

IT professionals are increasingly charged to ensure high availability of environments without any downtime on business and critical services. The problem is that this process of ensuring that no problem occurs in the environment is not an easy task when a monitoring tool is not used for it.

When it comes to an IT environment, downtime can be from a server heat issue to a switch port issue. Performing a manual item-by-item assessment to find out the root cause of a problem can be quite labor-intensive and even time-consuming as the larger the environment, the greater the management demand.

IT infrastructure monitoring is the process of analyzing and making decisions based on what has been ascertained, making the service more resourceful and the resources best used. In addition to the reduction of equipment and maintenance costs.

When we talk about the importance of monitoring, we are not just acting proactively, not letting downtime occur. We also talk about monitoring of indirect resources that IT managers rarely observe. A clear example would be for a company that hires two carriers to ensure that it never runs out of internet access (link redundancy) but that, after deploying monitoring in the IT environment, realizes that the second link is often unavailable, i.e., the company pays for both links, and the secondary goes offline straight. In this case, if the first link becomes unavailable, the second link could also be, thus affecting users and businesses.

In addition to this scenario mentioned above, monitoring is also very important for making correct investments in the IT environment, as the team can see trends in their environment. The vast majority of companies have a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), meaning they have a projected financial estimate for IT investment. When we talk about medium and large environments, where TCO and demand are very high, any failure can lead to irreparable problems.

If the environment has monitoring, IT managers can get enough data to project a demand trend, i.e. it is possible to predict that in 3, 4, 5 months the demand for resources (memory, CPU, network, disks, etc.) may be larger, ensuring that the budget is spent on what is really needed.

 How much does an Hour of Downtime Cost?

According to a survey conducted by Forrester, a consultancy with 157 IT professionals, the cost of an hour of downtime in an organization can range from $ 10 million to $ 1 million.

The study also pointed to much relevant information, such as:

·         34% of respondents go through unavailability problems every day;

·         42% take between an hour and a week to identify the root of a problem in the IT services;

·         60% of them usually involve between four and ten employees in solving the problem.

Note that in addition to having the services unavailable, we still have the resources of employees used inappropriately, since they could be in projects focused on the business, acting proactively and not “putting out fires”.

Key Benefits of Monitoring

Safety

One of the most important parts of tracking is keeping your information secure. It will keep track of everything and alert your network administrator of any problems before they become major problems. Some of the things a network monitor can tell you is if something stops responding, its serious failure or its disk space is low. Network monitoring is perhaps the most proactive way to deal with problems so you can stay ahead of them, especially as you will be monitored 24/7.

Problems solution

Another great advantage of monitoring is the ability to troubleshoot. You can save a lot of time trying to diagnose what is wrong. With network monitoring, you can quickly know which device is giving you the problem. Your support team will be able to resolve an issue and fix it before users are aware of it. Because your monitoring is constant, it can help you track certain trends in your network performance. When problems occur sporadically or at peak times, they can be difficult to diagnose, but a network monitor will help you better understand what is going on.

Save Time and Money

Network monitoring will save a lot of time and a lot of money. Without this, a lot of time would have to be invested, which would result in more hours working. This will not only cost more money but will reduce productivity. When you can quickly point out and fix network problems, you are increasing your profits. Once you understand how all your devices are being used, you can identify what needs additional disk space so you can increase capacity quickly and effectively.

Change Plan

With network monitoring, you can track whether a device is running close to its limit and needs to be changed. This gives you the ability to plan ahead and easily make the necessary changes. All the reports you will have showing your activity and what type of health your system will be available in will be useful as excellent tools for your business. They will allow you to easily prove to others what is going on and show why one of your devices needs to be fixed or replaced.

Monitoring with Network Operations Center (NOC)

Monitoring IT environments have several benefits and are gaining more space every day. Because of this, companies of various sizes are investing in the creation of their monitoring environments, called NOC, either internally or with third parties.

NOC is the definition of Network Operations Center (Network Operations Center), where is centered environmental manages using monitoring tools are known as the Network Management System (NMS).

NOC guarantees:

·         Employees acting proactively;

·         Total availability of services;

·         Projection and trend evaluation;

·         Service Legal Agreement (SLA) analysis;

·         Environmental reports;

·         Event collectors;

·         Alert Generators

When it comes to IT infrastructure monitoring, centralized administration and management. In other words, integrations of several IT maintenance and management tools through a single console. This is because a centralized administration and monitoring provides a bird’s eye view the entire IT network that is essential for any business to succeed.