10 Hottest Network Monitoring Support Topics
Network monitoring can be the most indispensable tool in a professional's toolbox because it offers a deep understanding of IT infrastructure.
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Do you get bogged down trying to both maintain sufficient performance across your Microsoft applications, while troubleshooting related problems as they happen? If so, here are seven tips that will help you manage your software from Redmond:
Ensuring optimal Microsoft application performance starts by automatically maintaining an up-to-date network and server inventory of hardware and software assets, physical connectivity, and configuration. This helps to truly understand what is being supported in your environment. Doing this will also save time identifying relationships between devices and applications, and piecing them together to see the big picture. You may even find discrepancies in application versions or patch levels within Exchange or IIS server farms. You can correct these by through discovery, mapping and documenting your assets.
There are multiple elements responsible for providing Microsoft services and application content to end-users. Take monitoring Lync, for example. Lync alone has:
You get the idea. The same applies to any Web-based application. Like SharePoint on the front-end, middleware systems and back-end SQL databases, not to mention the underling network. Don’t take any shortcuts, monitor it all.
If any of these components in the application delivery chain underperform, your Microsoft applications will inevitably slow down and bring employee communications, productivity and business operations down with it.
There’s nothing worse than receiving an alert storm when a problem is detected. It can take hours to sort out what has a red status, why it has that status, and whether it was a real problem or a false positive. It’s a waste of time and delays the root cause identification and resolution.
A far better solution is to monitor the entire application service as a whole. This includes IIS servers, SQL servers, physical and virtual servers and the underlying network. Identify monitoring capabilities that will discover and track end-to-end dependencies and suppress alerts (if a database is “down,” all related apps will also be “down”). This is also the foundation to build SLA monitoring strategies aligned with business goals. Read on to find out more.
Application performance monitoring tools let you drill down from one unified view into the offending component to reduce triage and troubleshooting to just minutes. Even if you are not a DBA, you should be able to quickly identify that SQL is the culprit. Plus, think about automatic corrective actions as part of your monitoring strategy to restore service levels faster. This includes using Write Event Log, Run Scripts, Reboot, Active and PowerShell scripts. For example, Exchange and SQL are well-known for their high memory consumption and high IOs, so you may want to automatically reboot them to avoid service disruptions for your users when exceeded memory reaches a problematic level.
Use built-in application monitoring features that come with your Microsoft applications like Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, IIS, Dynamics, SQL and Windows. Or even some free tools. Every organization is different, so there really is no one size fits all approach to this. Look for pre-packaged monitoring with capabilities to easily tweak settings, so you can also monitor custom applications or more feature-rich applications.
It is a wireless world out there, and BYOD continues to grow. Mobility has transformed wireless networks into business-critical assets that support employee connectivity, productivity and business Ops. For example, Microsoft corporate headquarters runs Lync over Aruba Wi-Fi. Just like you want a map of your wired assets, look for capabilities to automatically generate dynamic wireless maps — WLCs, APs and Clients — from the same single point of control.
Your Microsoft applications may be the backbone of your business. Slowdowns, intermittent application performance problems or failures will drive escalations through the roof. Not to mention bringing productivity, Ops and even revenue to a halt. Customizable reporting (by application, by servers, by location, etc.) and automatic email distribution capabilities (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) will help to keep cross-functional team members and stakeholders in the know. Get in the habit of periodically analyzing all performance data to identify problematic trends early on, properly plan capacity, and justify investment on additional resources.
Maintaining network performance can sometimes feel like a gargantuan task, with issues seemingly coming out of nowhere. However, many of these unforeseen problems can actually be anticipated and avoided with the correct monitoring solutions in place.
Network monitoring can be the most indispensable tool in a professional's toolbox because it offers a deep understanding of IT infrastructure.
Active Directory (AD) is in many ways the lifeblood of your network, especially in terms of user and identity management. AD has become the core directory service for most enterprises, keeping track of users and IT assets, allowing all these to be identified and manipulated.
Quality of service can be viewed as measuring the performance of a network or telephone service, thereby providing an indication of its quality.
A network key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurement and benchmark for achieving optimal network performance goals. To support these goals, measuring actual performance against the KPI goals helps the network team make decisions to improve and sustain network performance and service levels.
A Domain Name System (DNS) helps convert your domain names into accessible IP addresses, and it is crucial to understand how to monitor activity on a DNS server.
Have network problems pinpointed for you.
Network downtime is no fun for anyone. End users (tied to their computing devices) don’t know what to do, customers and partners can’t do business with you and IT pulls out more hair than a barber shop floor.
Any IT pro worth their salt knows all about adopting cloud computing and its benefits, from faster innovation cycles to flexible deployment.
WhatsUp Gold release 2023.1 includes several exciting updates meant to close gaps in Network Visibility.
Zero Trust is ever more vital as enterprises move to the cloud and the workforce becomes more remote.
Public sector organizations including federal, state and local government, military, education, law enforcement, transit, public health care and myriad others, have needs very different from their commercial counterparts.
IT teams within enterprise companies must monitor multiple infrastructure components and use syslogs to assist with their day-to-day jobs.
Gartner published an official Market Guide for Infrastructure and Operations leaders who are looking to upgrade their infrastructure tech stack.
Server monitoring is necessary for any IT department in companies of any size. Learn why server monitoring is crucial and how to improve your own server monitoring practices.
Several server monitoring tools are on the market for enterprise-level companies and early-stage startups. But which one is going to work best for your organization's infrastructure?
What is application performance management (APM) and how can it help your digital products?
Since disagreement exists on what the term network observability actually means.
Understanding a network’s performance across multiple devices can make or break an application’s performance—which in turn affects the application experience.
Meeting internal SLAs and managing vendor SLAs are critical IT mandates.
Network traffic analysis is a process utilized to monitor incoming network traffic for overall performance, security and assorted maintenance issues. Learn more about the ins and outs of network traffic analysis (NTA), the benefits and more.
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