More manageable complex networks: As systems extend or migrate to the cloud and incorporate an ever-expanding array of devices, transparency becomes increasingly difficult to achieve.It also reduces the amount of time and labor your IT team spends getting to the bottom of latency and other performance issues and frees them to pursue higher-value tasks. Improved efficiency and productivity: Network monitoring is a proactive approach that helps identify and - with the help of automation - fix problems more quickly.When executing on your multicloud strategy, step one should be to determine every cloud deployment currently in operation at your organization, as well as its purpose and efficiencies. While this gives the organization agility, it can also lead to duplicated effort, increased expenses and added complexity. Less downtime: Many organizations fully democratize cloud services, giving numerous stakeholders the ability to source and operate their own cloud services as needed.Network monitoring offers many benefits, including: By collecting network performance, error rates, and bandwidth utilization data, administrators can proactively resolve performance problems related to interface issues. Interface monitoring: An interface problem can be as simple as a bad cable that needs to be replaced or can be indicative of a larger problem in the network.Regular monitoring of metrics such as CPU utilization, fan speed, device temperature and power supply status can help admins stay on top of hardware health and prevent any problems from hurting network performance. Hardware: Networking hardware is the foundation of your IT infrastructure, so the failure or malfunction of any of these components can severely compromise network performance.Disk monitoring allows administrators to identify storage performance for errors, ensure effective space utilization, track I/O performance and generally keep disks working optimally, while also further reducing downtime. Disk/storage performance: Given that all organizations store critical business data on hard drives and other storage devices, any problems with these devices can potentially be devastating.Availability monitoring helps administrators track the uptime of switches, routers, firewalls and other critical system components so they can address problems before they impact the business. Availability: Business today demands 24/7 availability of your IT infrastructure.Each organization will have to determine what is most important to monitor in their particular network, but common network monitoring practices include tracking the following:
Similar to performance monitoring, network monitoring software can track a variety of factors that can indicate the network performance issues and reliability of the IT infrastructure, critical for simple network management. In the following sections, we’ll examine how network monitoring works, how it benefits organizations of all sizes, and how you can get started with a network monitoring solution. Network monitoring simplifies the process by automating many of the checks a system administrator would otherwise have to perform manually, and surfacing performance information so IT staff can act quickly to resolve problems. If the collected data doesn’t fall within acceptable performance thresholds, the network monitoring system initiates an automated fix or alerts the network administrator so they can correct the problem.Īs network infrastructure grows larger and more complex, it becomes harder for administrators to stay on top of component health, security vulnerabilities and other issues that can compromise network performance. The software tracks and collects data for various network parameters such as availability, throughput, packet loss and storage performance. Network monitoring, not to be confused with network management, is typically performed by specialized network monitoring software that uses a combination of techniques to continuously test the network health and functionality, including network components like firewalls, switches, servers and virtual machines. Network monitoring is the oversight of a computer network to detect degrading performance, slow or failing components and other potential problems.