Tired of being the “firefighter” in the IT team who always struggles to deal with problems as soon as they arise? IT infrastructure is getting more complex by the day, hence all IT managers across IT face the same problem. But not anymore as there are network monitoring tools that can prevent problems in IT infrastructure. Check out how to do it below! 

What is IT Infrastructure Monitoring?

Infrastructure monitoring is the process of tracking and analyzing data collected from the IT infrastructure. This includes network devices, servers, containers, virtual machines, databases, and others. The goal is to detect and address issues so as to gain higher business revenue. 

IT infrastructure monitoring is similar to the use of fitness trackers that track a person’s heart rate, steps, and sleep patterns. Just like fitness trackers, infrastructure monitoring tools monitor infrastructure health and performance, so IT teams can take proactive steps to ensure optimal functionality and improve the company’s digital operations. 

Benefits of IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Here are 4 main advantages of network monitoring in complex IT infrastructures:

1. Early Problem Identification and Proactive Resolution

Infrastructure monitoring tools monitor all activities taking place across IT systems in real-time. This tool allows IT teams to find problems before they turn into serious issues. 

Not only that, network monitoring tools give corporate networks the power to proactively resolve potential problems. That way, the infrastructure will continue to run stably and end users will not be affected by the experience. 

2. Better Budget Planning

Budgeting is a big issue for enterprise IT teams, especially those that have to use multiple devices. With infrastructure utilization, IT teams can anticipate performance issues that may arise within them and maintain an inventory of all those devices that may be replaced in the future. 

This visibility and clarity makes it easier for the IT team to budget. In addition, network monitoring tools also help the IT team to prepare technical requirements and schedules related to replacements and upgrades. 

3. Better Resource Utilization

IT infrastructure offers key insights into system performance by monitoring several metrics, such as:

• CPU utilization
• memory utilization
• network traffic
• response time.

Knowing info about the above four points will help the IT team identify data sources that are underutilized or, on the contrary, overutilized. After that, the IT team can take appropriate resource allocation measures to ensure optimal resource utilization. 

4. Increased Return of Investment (ROI)

Infrastructure monitoring allows IT teams to focus more on delivering more value to end users. That way, the opportunity to increase ROI is more open. In addition, there are several other factors that help in improving ROI, including: 

• improved system reliability
• faster problem identification
• fast problem resolution
• minimized downtime.

Infrastructure Monitoring Best Practices

In order to monitor IT infrastructure, here are 3 best practices that companies can do:

1. Collect Relevant Metrics

Sometimes companies miss important insights among the abundance of metrics data. To avoid this, IT teams must ensure that they only collect metrics that are relevant and useful to the company. 

To determine the correct metrics, IT teams can take the following steps:

• identify the metrics to be monitored for virtual machines, physical machines, networks, etc.
• monitor logs and check performance metrics periodically
• periodically review the monitored metrics and make changes to the IT infrastructure accordingly.

2. Implement Automation

Infrastructure monitoring involves too many checks, making it impossible to check each one manually. This is why automation is so important. Utilize the automation features of infrastructure monitoring tools to improve Mean Time to Respond (MTTR). In addition, automation also allows companies to get a thorough end-to-end research.

3. Conduct Periodic Testing

Testing infrastructure monitoring tools is essential. Whether a company is integrating a new application or just starting from scratch, tests need to be conducted to ensure that everything is working as it should. 

Before starting to rely on infrastructure monitoring tools on a daily basis, IT teams need to schedule thorough testing to validate their functionality and alignment with infrastructure needs. This proactive step ensures that everything is working properly. 

How to Choose the Right IT Infrastructure Monitoring Tool

There are several factors to consider when choosing the right IT infrastructure monitoring tool for your company, namely:

1. Integrated IT Infrastructure Monitoring

The chosen infrastructure monitoring tool should be able to monitor physical, network, storage, and virtual servers, cloud applications, and on-premises applications simultaneously. If the chosen tool does not have this capability, then the company’s infrastructure may experience problems such as the following:

• constant tool switching
• delayed resolution of critical errors
• need to keep records of multiple licenses. 

2. Support for Multiple Vendors

Nowadays, companies usually deal with multiple vendors at once to fulfill their various IT requirements. This is why it is important to choose an IT infrastructure monitoring tool that is capable of supporting multi-vendor network endpoints. Here, the enterprise IT team must ensure that the IT infrastructure monitoring tool has the flexibility to track various infrastructure components, regardless of the vendor. 

3. Scalability

If the business is growing, the IT team needs to consider the scalability of the IT infrastructure monitoring tool. The reason is because companies certainly do not want the performance of infrastructure monitoring tools to decrease in performance along with the expansion of IT infrastructure. Every company wants to grow, so IT infrastructure is very likely to grow in the future. 

It is important to determine scalability from the start by answering the 3 questions below:

• can the monitoring tool monitor a large number of applications and devices?
• can it manage different types of data such as metrics, logs and traces?
• can it manage a large amount of data without compromising its performance?

It is advisable to choose an IT infrastructure monitoring tool that satisfies the above three questions in order to be able to meet the scalability along with the expected growth of the company in a certain period of time. Network monitoring is indispensable in maintaining the security of an increasingly complex IT network infrastructure, especially as the company grows. Use a reliable and quality network monitoring tool to fulfill this task. Netmonk comes as network monitoring that has been used by more than 1000 companies in Indonesia. Visit the Netmonk web for more info!