Best Server Monitoring Tool: How to Choose It?

Source: Internet
Author: User
Keywords what is server monitoring tools simple server monitoring software server and application monitoring tools
The best-selling style server monitoring tool can effectively track the availability and overall performance of the server. Well, the problem is that the administrator wants to focus on the entire environment through a single interface.

Accurate monitoring makes administrators completely satisfied that every real or virtual workload is running well. The server monitoring tool can handle it carefully and efficiently. However, different people have different needs. Let us go through some choices.

The best server monitoring tool according to your requirements and the functions it provides
During the evaluation, the main goal of server performance monitoring software is to select software that can meet your business needs and budget. Several server monitoring software share some common options, such as CPU or process monitoring. Others emphasize specific components of the data center or management, such as network activities and functional design.

From simple solutions that only perform basic tasks to complex frameworks capable of running a large number of advanced management modules, monitoring products have a wide range of complexity and value.

Current and future development
Start your search by selecting tools that support your current server hardware and future upgrades. For example, if your company uses specific servers and plans to continue using them-make sure that the monitoring tools are installed on these servers, and confirm that the seller can provide this support for a long time. Hardware compatibility helps ensure that the tool will monitor hardware-level behaviors such as temperature and fan speed. And this method enables employees to spot potential problems before actual system failures occur.

Benchmark function
The standard feature set usually includes basic knowledge such as central processing unit, memory, disk, network I/O utilization, and process monitoring. Network features are sometimes blocked; employees are allowed to monitor each computer in the company's LAN, evaluate the network load handled by each server, and closely monitor TCP/IP services. More and more observation tools provide support for servers virtualized by VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, and automatically detect virtual machines and the resources they provide.

Choose between agent and agentless monitoring tools
The overall server tracking is handled by the server performance monitoring tool in the following way. For example, monitoring tools and their related SQL Server performance monitors (such as SQL databases) are placed on one or more dedicated servers.

Then, the tool will discover and communicate with surrounding backup servers, prepare reports, and transfer performance knowledge to the program. There are basically two ways to find and communicate with an alternative server.

The first is to place agent computer code on each server managed by the observation tool. The agent runs as a utility on each server, collecting and obtaining ready information that can be passed directly back to the monitoring server.

Agent monitoring
Proxies usually provide a lot of flexibility to manage a wider range of servers. Unfortunately, the proxy requires some computational overhead on each server, which may slow down the performance of each managed server. The agent software should even be maintained and upgraded as needed, which will increase the workload of employees.

Agentless monitoring
The alternative is to use agentless observation. This means that the monitoring tool itself will directly communicate with the server to introduce status information and manage it on the system. Since there are not many agents involved, this method is easier to keep up with. Therefore, there is no software package version issue.

Since agentless monitoring depends on the hardware level awareness of each system, the quality of monitoring tools is limited to the server brand, model or supported OS version. For example, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor currently support Hewlett-Packard ProLiant, Dell PowerEdge and IBM X series servers.

Proxy and proxyless tracking applications
Eventually, brick-and-mortar stores running restricted system suites are likely to retrieve results from agentless performance monitoring, while heterogeneous organizations may adopt agent-based tracking methods to adapt to the range of systems operating in the environment.

If you want to easily meet your monitoring needs, you can perform these four simple steps
1. Check your environment carefully
First analyze your applications and the environment in which they run. Most organizations have a large percentage of internal deployments; therefore, the ability to monitor hardware is critical.

On the other hand, public cloud computing and complex applications are closely related to the future of every IT organization (if it does not exist). Therefore, it is also important to shape the necessities based on the extended practical options. Generate a list of current and future performance observation needs and compare it with application performance management to screen potential vendors.

2. Define your liquidity
Your tool choices range from free to overpriced, and its functionality and ease of use will undoubtedly increase as prices increase. Check your budget and estimate the investment you want to make in performance observation. Consider the value of any application downtime without server performance monitoring tools. This calculation may release some extra cash.

3. Choose your preferred preparation option
In the past, software package as a service (SaaS) performance monitoring technology provided less practicality than its local counterparts. Nowadays, this may basically not be true, so the choice of deployment depends entirely on preference. Choosing one preparation option over another can separate certain products and modify the decision-making method.

4. Create a candidate list and pilot
Almost all products are required to perform well in supplier tests and demonstrations; however, some servers may operate differently in actual data centers. Try your three main options. These tools are difficult to deploy together. Instead, generate a scaled down application and then apply each shortlisted performance monitoring tool to that application. This method can help you understand how they work and strictly compare the practicability of monitoring tools for ease of use.

Future-oriented choice
Most companies will use public cloud computing. Therefore, even if you are not on the short-term roadmap, any product you focus on should support this transition. Check your current and future infrastructure environment.

Step forward
Even though the seller strives to create easy-to-use products, the truth is that advanced applications require a lot of sophisticated monitoring tools. Your employees will encounter a learning curve when choosing any performance monitoring product. Invest in training and you will reap the benefits of surveillance as soon as possible.
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