Xiao Li-cloud monitoring methods for SMEs and entrepreneurial teams

Xiao Li-cloud monitoring methods for SMEs and entrepreneurial teams

Entrepreneurial teams often have fewer people, emphasize efficiency, and speed. Therefore, public clouds are generally used to deploy services. cloud-based monitoring is a difficult issue. This article discusses the cloud monitoring methods of entrepreneurial teams.

I want to share this question because I have a friend who just happened to be in a startup team a few days ago. Their business was initially launched and the effect was good, but there were several business problems, it takes a long time to receive user feedback before troubleshooting. After several tossing times, I realized the importance of monitoring.

To quickly solve the problem, they used the commercial monitoring solution, which worked well. After a week, they completed comprehensive monitoring at the system and business level, it can promptly send text messages and send email alerts when there are business problems, and then quickly handle them. After the monitoring system comes up, the Service Fault Handling Time is significantly shortened, and the user satisfaction is improved.

This article discusses the following issues:

Public cloud is suitable for Enterprises

Where are the difficulties of public cloud monitoring?

Cloud-based business monitoring

Cloud-based business monitoring methods

Suggestions on cloudmonitor for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Public cloud is suitable for Enterprises

The concept of cloud computing has been gaining popularity for several years. Cloud computing and virtualization are already standard for the Internet industry. The Internet industry now uses various clouds, public clouds, or private clouds. Most enterprises use hybrid clouds, that is, Private clouds and public clouds. Even if they use public clouds, they also choose multiple services.

The traditional industry is also actively embracing cloud computing, and various industries are integrating their businesses with the Internet to transform to "Internet +.

At first, the public cloud was embraced by small and medium-sized entrepreneurial teams, especially when mobile web games emerged, the cloud did solve the pain points of Small and Medium-sized entrepreneurial teams, and they did not need to buy their own servers, build your own data centers and deploy your own networks.

Small and medium-sized entrepreneurial teams are already human and resource-intensive, and cloud has lowered their barrier so that they can focus on their own business. The startup cloud computing companies and small and medium-sized entrepreneurial teams have joined hands and started the first wave of use boom in the cloud computing industry. At present, this boom continues.

Cloud computing is the accelerator of the current hot entrepreneurial wave, making it easier to start a business and lower the threshold. Even many enterprises have developed their habits. They have become bigger, listed, and continue to use the cloud, because they have tasted the sweetness of the cloud. There are also some examples abroad, from cloud to self-built, to completely cloudification.

However, the migration of enterprises to the cloud is only the first step. How do businesses run on the cloud, stability and instability, and how to detect problems in a timely manner? Only early detection and even early warning are possible, in order to minimize the time and scope of business impact, the entire process depends on many technical means. monitoring is one of the most important processes.

Where are the difficulties of public cloud monitoring?

The first difficulty is that public cloud service providers cannot provide comprehensive monitoring measures.

It is difficult to monitor VM instances from the host layer accurately. The CPU utilization, network, and disk I/O can be approximately accurate, but more detailed information cannot be seen, for example, the application uses a lot of CPU, not to mention the monitoring of application-level indicators.

In addition, even if the current public cloud provides these simple CPU, network, and disk monitoring, there is a time limit, ranging from 7 days to 30 days, because of the long-term data storage, it will consume a large amount of storage space of public cloud operators.

The second difficulty is that even if a public ECs instance can provide comprehensive monitoring services, users are very scruples.

To provide complete monitoring data, the public cloud must install the client program on the VM instance. Users generally have scruples about this and the public cloud service provider will also worry about it.

In theory, it is very difficult to obtain data on the running VM instance from the host machine. Besides, if a client is installed, most users are not at ease, A client installed on the user's cloud host has a problem, which is even more evidence.

The third difficulty is that users need to implement monitoring at a high cost.

Most small and medium-sized enterprises are using the cloud. The characteristics of these enterprises are that developers are single-digit, O & M is developer, and at most one person. At this time, the main responsibility of O & M is to deploy the business. It is the most important to ensure the stability of the business. The monitoring of the system and business can only be very basic, and it is difficult to perform very detailed monitoring.

Cloud-based business monitoring

To deploy services on the cloud, enterprises need to monitor the following aspects:

1. network quality of ECs vendors

This is the easiest way to ignore. Many enterprises think that they have chosen the public cloud, and the network quality is all right here. Services on the public cloud must rely on the network to carry out services, some businesses are very sensitive to network quality. Most clouds do not provide network quality monitoring. We recommend that enterprises on the cloud also pay attention to network quality monitoring.

2. Cloud host system-level monitoring

The system-level monitoring of VM instances includes the health status and CPU, memory, network, and disk usage of VM instances. The following aspects are used to monitor VM instances:

Monitor whether VM instances are running normally. If the VM instances are down, promptly discover them;

Monitors the pressure of VM instances. If the pressure exceeds the threshold, make timely adjustments;

Monitors the usage of VM instances. If the long-term pressure is too low, compress the services to save costs.

3. Business-layer monitoring

It is often encountered that VM instances run normally, but there are business problems, which can be divided into the following situations:

The business process is dead;

Business Performance bottlenecks, such as too many reads and writes, cannot be supported by databases. At this time, indicators at the system level may also respond;

Pre-defined bottlenecks at the business logic level. For example, a business process can only support 1024 links logically. When more than 1000 links are established, the business cannot provide external services;

Trigger a program bug.

If there is no detailed monitoring on the business layer, it will often take a long time for business problems to be discovered. Monitoring is our eyes and radar. the finer the monitoring on business indicators, the more advantageous we are to find the problem, the more advantageous we are to troubleshoot the problem based on the historical monitoring data, to avoid the next occurrence of the same situation.

On-cloud service Monitoring Method Introduction

We know that business monitoring is very important, so there are some monitoring methods:

1. In terms of open-source tools and network quality monitoring, you can use the open-source SmokePing, system, and business. Currently Zabbix is popular in China, and other monitoring tools such as Cacti are also available. These tools share the following features:

Open source is free of charge;

The learning curve is steep. Generally, it takes one to two years to become proficient;

Functions can meet basic needs, but secondary development is generally required to monitor more detailed indicators;

It is difficult to integrate with other existing systems. Secondary Development is required for integration.

2. Use commercial services

Currently, the better monitoring products in China are cloudmonitor. you can apply for a free trial.

In terms of network quality, cloudmonitor has global network quality monitoring:

There are also domestic network quality monitoring:

Cloudmonitor has its own fixed nodes. Unlike SmokePing, you also need to find IP addresses in different regions, and the IP addresses you are looking for often cause ping failure.

The cloudhost system-level monitoring method provides a dedicated solution for VM instances.

You can even monitor Docker virtual machines:

Cloudhost monitoring of cloudmonitor is very simple for users. you can install the monitoring terminal with one click, and you will soon be able to figure it out. By default, it includes very comprehensive metrics.

For example, the network quality is divided into the world and China:

Performance indicators for CPU, memory, network, and disk usage include:

You can also easily customize your business monitoring Metrics Based on your needs:

You can also customize alert templates and alert methods:

In addition, cloudmonitor also has APIs that can be easily integrated with other business systems, as well as apps on mobile phones, so that you can learn about your business on mobile phones at any time.

Suggestions on cloudmonitor for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Many people think that there is no need to use commercial solutions when there are open-source solutions. In fact, small and medium-sized enterprises are very suitable for using commercial solutions. The benefits are as follows:

Cost-effective purchase, commercial solutions are perfect and can be deployed and used in just a few days. The use of open-source solutions requires constant polishing, with the cycle measured in years, as the business keeps changing, it is actually a long-term process;

We don't have to worry too much about people. It's hard for enterprises to cultivate an open-source monitoring expert. As a result, they leave their jobs and start from scratch;

My friends use commercial solutions to better solve their own problems. Of course, if there are too many O & M development engineers and their own business scale is already very large, so they need to build their own private cloud, this may need to be based on business needs, develop a monitoring system that meets your needs.