Unified IT Monitoring

As the size of your organization increases, the size of your network infrastructure grows with it. Hence it is no longer sufficient to use a silo based approach for network monitoring where each network functionality is monitored by an individual tool.

A typical network infrastructure comprises of multiple processes and the need of the hour is a unified infrastructure monitoring tool to unite all of these individual silos and collectively monitor them to achieve overall efficiency.

What are the different silos of infrastructure monitoring?

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1. Infrastructure component monitoring:

Infrastructure components can be broadly classified into physical and virtual components and have to be properly incorporated into your IT infrastructure. These new components need to be carefully configured, and the ones already existing in your infrastructure need to be monitored for health and availability. They also have to be updated with the latest configuration to prevent out-of-sync issues with the new devices.

To ensure efficient system performance, the various metrics of these components such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, process monitors, system monitors, etc are monitored for in-depth analysis. This greatly assists with capacity planning, reducing energy consumption, etc.

2. Security and firewall management:

Firewall is the first line of defense against malware, hackers, viruses, and other cyber threats. Almost every organization is equipped with a firewall since besides safeguarding your sensitive data, a competent firewall will generate security standards reports that will assist you in complying with security compliance laws such as PCI-DSS, ISO 2700, NIST, SANS, NERC-CIP etc.

Firewalls operate by scrutinizing log activities, thus monitoring for any spike in activity, identify and eliminate rogue devices, address Access point vulnerabilities etc. Firewalls extend their protection to remote devices via VPN for a secure work environment away from office.

3. Compliance and configuration management:

Security breaches are becoming increasingly common. and even large scale organizations are struggling to secure their data and prevent data theft. For this purpose, a configuration and compliance management tool is employed. Not only will it assist you with maintaining compliance with leading standards such as Cisco IOS, SOX, HIPAA, and PCI but also proactively alert you when a compliance breach is about to occur, allowing preventive measures to be employed.

Configuration management is the process of establishing and maintaining system performance. A competent configuration management tool saves your business by preventing critical systems plunging into unscheduled downtime by keeping a tight leash on your network configuration.

Configuration management involves performing automatic configuration backups that can be deployed as soon as a misconfiguration is detected. The process also involves employing role-based access thus restricting critical configuration changes to the super admins, saving human efforts by automating device updates etc, to better understand the changes that will be implemented in the system, ultimately help track configuration changes in real-time

4. Bandwidth and traffic analysis:

Bandwidth and traffic monitoring is to understand the bandwidth availability and usage patterns on your infrastructure and understand its traffic flow, usage, bandwidth hogs, and network strains in real-time.

By monitoring your bandwidth and traffic, you get to keep all the application running 24x7, lag-free, with minimal jitter and latency.

Bandwidth analysis and traffic shaping is performed by leveraging flow technologies such as NetFlow, Sflow, and jFlow.vWith the above data, advanced reports (eg: forecast report) can be generated to facilitate bandwidth capacity planning to better manage your existing IT environment and also accommodate its future growth.

5. IP address and switch port management:

IPAM is used to plan, track and manage your infrastructure's IP address space. With this, IT admins can ensure the repository of assignable IP addresses are always updated, gain improved visibility over IP resource management, perform IP address delegation with better clarity. And also, having access to IPAM data makes it easier to identify potential data breaches or device misuse within an organization.

IPAM tools periodically scan the routers and subnets for rogue IPs allowing the admin to flag and block them from accessing the system. Similarly, switch port management is used to track port usage and manage inactive ports.

6. Applications and storage monitoring:

In today's digital world, speed is everything. Having applications and websites that are slow to respond will invariably affect end-users and cause impacts on business productivity, and profits alike.

This is where Application monitoring comes handy, it enables you to monitor all your business critical applications and make sure they are performing properly. It also helps to generate reports for in-depth performance analysis. Applications such as custom web applications, mobile application, popular technologies across server, virtual machines, cloud applications, containers, application servers, databases, big data stores, middleware & messaging components, web servers, web services & ERP suites can be monitored.

Increasing storage can temporarily fix your organization's storage needs however, in the longer run, it is imperative to opt for a storage management system. Employing a storage management process will not only allow you to better manage your storage but also efficiently make plans to accommodate future requirements.

OpManager Plus: Unified IT infrastructure management solution

OpManager Plus unites all the individual silos of infrastructure management and offers a truly unified IT infrastructure management solution.

The advantages of employing OpManager Plus for your unified IT operations management needs are numerous:

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IT infrastructure monitoring challenges

While there is no doubt that having a clearly defined strategy can help your organization get the most out of every penny invested in its IT infrastructure and ensure that the business does not suffer losses due to network issues, monitoring IT infrastructure does have its challenges. This includes:

  • Eliminates tool switching: The most common discomfort plaguing IT admins is the constant need to switch between various tools that monitor different aspects of the infrastructure. OpManager Plus eliminates this by providing a single unified console for all your IT infrastructure monitoring needs.
  • Enables cross-functional IT infrastructure management activities through unified console:: Normally, cross functional operations such as pushing safe configuration to restore device availability in case of device failure, identifying and restricting devices that consume excess bandwidth etc, requires multiple tools working in tandem. However with OpManager Plus, this can be easily performed since the entire network infrastructure is managed by a single tool, thus drastically increasing the MTTR.
  • Enhances visibility across all your infrastructure components: OpManager Plus monitors all your IT infrastructure components and hence provides in-dept real-time visibility across all aspects of your network infrastructure. OpManager Plus can also be employed to present a detailed visual representation of your data center (including 3D rack and floor views) , network topology maps, and business views.
  • Prevents purchase of expensive tools to track tool licensing: When a large number of tools are employed to manage the operation of an organization, an individual resource/tool that is capable of monitoring the licensing of all the infrastructure monitoring tools is required - which only adds to the overhead expenses. OpManager Plus's dynamic functionality eliminates the need to purchase multiple tools, sparing you from the capital expenses and the need to monitor licenses.
  • Enables seamless integration with multiple tools: Besides seamlessly managing the multiple infrastructure silos in your organization, OpManager Plus also allows you to increase your scope of infrastructure monitoring abilities by integrating with other 3rd party tools.
 
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