Server Monitoring

Server monitoring is the process of monitoring a server's system resources like CPU Usage, Memory Consumption, I/O, Network, Disk Usage, Process etc. Server Monitoring metrics also helps in capacity planning by understanding the server's system resource usage. A server monitoring tool helps in automating the process of server monitoring. Monitoring server performance also helps in identifying other performance related issues like resource utilization, app downtime and response time.

Why is it important to monitor server performance?

• To monitor server availability and data loss.
• To monitor the responsiveness of the server.
• To know the server capacity, user load and speed of the server.
• To detect and prevent any issues that might affect the server proactively.

Server performance monitoring in ManageEngine OpManager

OpManager provides multi vendor support to Monitor Server and all their critical applications continuously along with their services and processes. It periodically monitors servers via SNMP and WMI protocols to ensure that they are up and running at their optimum performance level, 24x7. It stores all the data for historical performance tracking and troubleshooting, thus eliminating the need for multiple server monitoring tool. Get in-depth insights in real time and monitor server performance effectively with OpManager.

• Real-time server performance monitoring
• Server availability and health monitoring
• Proactive server monitoring with multi level thresholds
• Monitor application performance
• Monitor VMware ESX servers and Guest OS performance
• Monitor Exchange server performance
• Services monitoring
• Windows services monitoring
• Server process monitoring
• Windows event log monitoring
• URL and website monitoring

Real-time-server performance monitor dashboard

OpManager, the trusted server performance monitor, out-of-the-box offers various system performance monitoring features such as CPU monitoring, memory monitoring, Disk monitoring up to a minute interval. It provides a graphical view of these metrics to monitor and measure server performance, in real-time. It also allows you to drill down to a particular time interval to understand more about the issue and take necessary actions proactively. Utilizing this, you can fix issues before it causes serious damage to your business. For monitoring the availability and performance of other networking devices like switches, routers, storage devices, printers, and more, network monitoring tools are used. You can also obtain a holistic view of the status of your servers instantly by creating custom server monitoring dashboard such as Windows server monitoring dashboard, Linux server monitoring dashboard, server performance monitoring dashboard, etc.

Monitoring server availability and health

OpManager, one among the leading server performance monitoring tools, offers several out-of-the-box features such as server availability monitoring and more than 300 performance metrics such as page read/write, processor queue length, free physical memory, disk I/O, process queue length through SNMP and WMI protocols. OpManager's server uptime monitoring feature helps you keep tabs on the availability of all physical and virtual servers 24x7. You can monitor critical performance metrics every minute and detect performance issue at its early stage by using powerful features like server monitoring dashboards. Apart from the default monitors, you can also create your own custom monitors using server monitoring dashboard template. All the collected data of the server performance metrics are stored in the database for detailed analysis and for creating monthly and yearly performance reports.

Proactive server monitoring with multi-level thresholds

In IT, more than 50% of the issues are reported by end users and it is not a healthy approach. Server monitor should identify any performance related issue at the early stages and notify the IT team. OpManager, the best-in-class server monitoring software, offers proactive server monitoring using multiple thresholds. It allows you to check performance at various levels and notify the same through email and SMS when it is violated.

Web server monitoring and application performance

When it comes to business-critical applications, you don’t want to leave any stone unturned. OpManager offers advanced server monitoring services and monitors processes and Windows services, with most of the discovery and monitoring done out-of-the-box. OpManager can even detect attempted security break-ins over your application servers (login failures due to bad passwords, account lockouts, failed attempts to access secure files, etc.) by processing Windows Event logs & syslog monitoring.

Monitor VMware ESX servers and Guest OS performance

OpManager includes support for virtual server monitoring. It provides an exclusive server monitoring dashboard for each ESX server, showing the CPU, memory and disk utilization for each guest VM instance on the ESX server. OpManager also provides options to Start, Stop and Suspend the VM instances on the ESX server. Get instant alerts on VMs using excessive resources and even remotely stop the VMs before they cause problems in the ESX server.

Monitor Exchange server performance

OpManager's server performance monitoring goes beyond basic server monitoring functionality to include support for SMTP, POP and IMAP on your Exchange servers. It monitors over 15 key services and 50 critical variables that include Public Store, Private Store, Received or Sent Queue Size, etc.. All this, over a specially crafted Exchange monitoring dashboard that automatically assigns performance monitors and preconfigured thresholds depending on whether the servers are Exchange 2000, 2003 or 2005.

Services monitoring

At the time of device discovery, OpManager discovers all the services running on your Windows & Linux servers and associates availability and response time monitors to these. OpManager also supports adding monitors for custom services running on TCP port.

Windows services monitoring

Apart from monitoring system level services like HTTP, LDAP, SMTP etc., OpManager also monitors Windows Services e.g. Alerter, FTP, Net Logon, DHCP Server, IAS, Print Spooler etc.. Once a monitored service is found to have failed, OpManager can be configured to automatically restart the Windows Service or even the server.

Server process monitoring

OpManager discovers all the processes running on your servers and lists details such as Process ID, Process Name, Process Path and Process Argument. ‘Process Templates’ allow you to discover, manage and set thresholds easily across multiple servers, from a single window. The Remote Process Diagnostics section provides a quick view of the top processes by CPU and Memory utilization. This allows you to terminate troubling processes remotely.

Windows event log monitoring

OpManager can help you detect failed logins due to bad passwords, account lockouts, failed attempts to access secure files, security log tampering etc. by processing Windows security Event logs. Besides security logs, OpManager can also monitor application logs (out of the box rules for Exchange, IIS, MS–SQL and ISA servers), system logs and other event logs.

URL and website monitoring

Simply relying on availability and response time (TCP Port) checks won’t help you know if your website has been compromised. OpManager allows you to monitor a URL and search for a specific text on the page. When the text is missing you can be immediately alerted and you get to know in real time that your website has been compromised. OpManager’s website monitoring supports HTTP⁄ HTTPs and NTLM Authenticated sites.