“Set it and forget it” doesn’t work with computers. No matter how much we automate and how reliable the systems are, they’re too critical to our work processes to let them run without supervision. Even if a company migrates to the cloud, where some of that supervision responsibility belongs to the cloud provider, the company still needs to make sure that applications and data flows that cross cloud and data center boundaries work smoothly.

So monitoring your infrastructure is a necessity. Doing it right means monitoring for both proactive and reactive purposes.

Proactive Monitoring

Proactive monitoring collects data to help you make decisions for the future. Keeping track of CPU and storage utilization lets you plan for capacity expansion. Even in the cloud, where additional capacity is on demand, you’ll want to predict when you’ll need to use it for budget purposes. You can also use monitoring to estimate monthly billing based on usage to decide whether to start a project this month or wait ’til the next. Monitoring cloud performance and scalability also lets you determine if the vendor is meeting service level agreements and can support a decision to migrate to another provider.

Reactive Monitoring

Reactive monitoring helps you identify problems that are real now and provide logs and data to help you fix the problem. System monitoring alerts you to problems as they develop, hopefully letting you correct it before it impacts any end users, or at least containing a small problem and preventing it from turning into a major disaster.

Plan Your Monitoring

Whether your applications are in a computer room, a data center, or the cloud, you need to plan your monitoring to make sure you get the information you need. Identify relevant metrics across all components of your infrastructure: network, storage, and compute devices. You need monitoring of all automated processes to ensure that scripts and jobs complete successfully; monitoring should also verify that jobs complete within the expected time period. You may also want to implement application level monitoring, particularly for cloud applications and applications that are exposed externally, to make sure end users experience adequate performance.

The more places you have to look for data, the more likely you’ll miss something, so monitoring is most effective when all information is collated and presented in a single dashboard. Some tools are able to monitor both cloud and local systems, making configuring and managing your monitoring more straightforward.

Set Up Reliable Monitoring

Establishing a reliable monitoring process can be challenging. With our team’s expertise in networking, computer hardware, and applications, Prescient Solutions can implement monitoring that gives you insight into your system’s performance and ensures your systems are up when you need them. We provide 24×7 monitoring service that identifies problems as they occur and support that starts working on a resolution before you notice any impact. Call us at (847) 240-3900 for a free infrastructure assessment that will identify the ways a robust monitoring process can increase your system’s reliability and keep your business running without interruption.

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