One of the most important aspects of cloud planning is developing a monitoring strategy. Using the vendor’s monitoring tools is adequate when a business first shifts to the cloud but is rarely adequate long term. This is because almost all cloud users don’t have a single cloud; they have multiple clouds or a hybrid IT infrastructure that mixes cloud with on-premises resources, and cloud vendors’ tools have too narrow a focus.

Using tools from each cloud provider the business uses, plus whatever tools the business has historically used within its data center, also isn’t adequate. While a broad collection of tools can collect a broad array of data, covering all aspects of systems that require monitoring, it requires using multiple interfaces to review the data. There is no one place to look to get an overall sense of system status at a glance, or a single source of data that provides insight for how the infrastructure needs to change in the future. In addition, this is a haphazard way of implementing monitoring.

Instead, businesses should develop a cloud monitoring strategy that first identifies their needs for monitoring and then selects the smallest, simplest set of tools to satisfy this need. In some cases, this will mean using a set of vendor products and additionally building a custom interface to provide the consolidated perspective. In any case, the monitoring tools should be able to perform the following monitoring tasks:

1. Monitor status. Although cloud is highly reliable, that doesn’t mean there can’t be outages. It also doesn’t mean applications can’t be overloaded due to unusually high demand. Making sure systems are up and providing the required performance is still a key monitoring requirement.
2. Monitor cloud usage. In cloud, there are two aspects to utilization. The first is the traditional tracking of CPU, memory, and storage usage and growth. The second is the overall growth of cloud resources, since cloud allows them to be added dynamically rather than through a formal provisioning process. When cloud usage is growing because new resources are being added, companies may need to make sure those resources are needed or take measures to shut down or consolidate resources to control costs.
3. Monitor across environments. Many cloud-based applications don’t run entirely in one cloud; they make use of resources in the data center or in a different cloud. It’s therefore not enough to know that resources are up in the cloud; the status of their network links and connections to the other systems they depend on are also critical.

Prescient Solutions cloud services cover the complete scope of cloud needs, from cloud selection and migration planning to ongoing monitoring and support. Contact us to learn more about implementing effective monitoring for your cloud systems.