IT Infrastructure Monitoring Tools

The Value of IT Infrastructure Monitoring

IT is an important focal point of products and services for global production. No business or organization, regardless of size, can maintain its infrastructure without Information Technology. Without IT, there are no safeguards for servers, data centers, hardware and software, digital storage and more.

The infrastructure of tech involves virtual and physical assets. Processes and policies alongside HR are not usually considered a factor of the IT infrastructure.

The infrastructure and its monitoring is a process operated and owned by the IT business. IT collects and analyzes data and leverages the data to maximize business results. This in turn drives value creation for the business.

IT deploys specific and customized software tools. A company uses these tools to aggregate data through event logs throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure. Event logs are auto-computer generated by network devices or applications in response to user activity or network traffic.

Log files will share information, including date and time of the event, unique identifiers, who was logged into the computer, event source, computer name, and details about the event. There may be additional information related to the application from where it originated.

Monitoring software for IT infrastructure capture log files from the network. It aggregates them in a database where information gets sorted, analyzed and queried by humans or algorithms. Through these processes, IT organizations are able to reveal potential malicious attacks or security breaches, detect operations issues and find areas where improvement is necessary.

What Should You Monitor With IT Infrastructuring?

IT focuses on applications and endpoints in organization networks. They monitor for possible attack vectors where any actors with malicious intent hope to gain access to sensitive and proprietary organization information.

In that regard, hardware, software and network processes need monitoring on an ongoing basis to ensure their health status. Infrastructure monitoring looks to prevent any failure in hardware which could result in unwanted downtime and revenue loss.

Hardware monitoring

Monitoring tools retrieve and record data via computer and other machine sensors. This includes power and load sensors, battery life information, fan speed sensors, voltage and current sensors, and artificial sensors for users. For example, looking at data collection on operating systems, fan sensors can help identify a malfunction before its failure creates a computer or server to overheat.

Network monitoring

Network monitoring verifies proper functionality in internal organizational networks. Everything from performance to expected levels of speed is included. IT infrastructure tools for monitoring track connectivity levels and transfer rates employed by users. The network experience has to be seamless and to do so means monitoring all in- and outgoing connections. Network monitoring helps IT organizations be proactive whenever an unauthorized entity tries to connect to a network.

Application monitoring

IT infrastructure considers application monitoring a critical aspect of its engagement. Any software used by customers, employees and members of IT has the potential to put the organization at risk. Unscrupulous actors see software applications as credible attack vectors, as a powerful resource for retrieving business and operational intelligence. With this in mind, the latest in IT tech infrastructure monitoring tools allows organizations to track user behavior and obtain operational insight, as well as the identification of business opportunities.

What Are The Best Practices For Enterprise IT Infrastructure Monitoring?

When implemented with appropriate measures, IT infrastructure monitoring enhances the opportunity to proactively find and manage security risk. It mitigates operational management before there is a negative impact on the business.

In order to achieve and maximize all the benefits affiliated with IT infrastructure monitoring, here are five top practices:

1. Choosing a Reliable Partner

Every business must make a decision when it comes to IT infrastructure monitoring. They have the option of purchasing monitoring tools from a vendor or developing their own. By working with a vendor partner, a business has one-on-one consultation and assistance. They give themselves access to personalized configuration and the greatest value in IT infrastructure monitoring. The knowledge and expertise born from working with adapting to various infrastructures will be worth the investment.

2. Prioritize and Organize Notifications

IT infrastructure creates great amounts of data in the form of event logs on a daily basis. Configuring software to capture and deliver notifications will be critical. There has to be categorization for notifications, such as high priority. These categories represent the level of organizational response. Teams will be immediately alerted to red flagged security breaches and server outages. They will also hear about lower priority matters that may not require an urgent response.

3. Develop a Comprehensive Alert System

The aim of alert configuration should aim for high coverage and high specificity. The more alerts in an organization’s toolkit, the greater chance it has of having a critical matter brought to the organization’s attention in a timely matter. A vendor partner that’s analyzed the organization can be helpful in developing a list of high, mid and low level priority events. Alerts will be designed based on unique parameters. IT configures alerts to reduce the number of false positives generated by an alerting system.

4. Review Baseline KPIs and Metrics Accordingly

Metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) set to an alerting system may destabilize over a period of time. Reviewing these processes periodically determines where configurations are sound and where to install adjustments as needed.

5. Designing Dashboards For The Right People

IT infrastructure monitoring software engineering allows the presentation of processed data in a dashboard. Dashboards are the fastest way to visualize information. The IT team configures these instruments to provide business insights, to give operational data and to review anomalous events that represent possible security threats. Leveraging this data efficiently entails customized dashboards for managing roles (operation dashboards for ops management, security dashboard for analysts in IT security, metrics dashboard for CFOs and sales managers, or operational dashboards for IT operations).