Management and monitoring tools are currently being used by many departments within your organization to help assess, optimize and create reports on your current operations.
IT Operations Management (ITOM) tools include DBMS, application management, availability and performance, event, fault and log management, network management, configuration management, IT services desk and IT help desk, asset management, job scheduling and other ITOM.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (ITIM) tools capture the availability of the various IT infrastructure components that reside in a data centre or are hosted in the cloud as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). These tools monitor and collate the availability and resource utilization metrics of servers, networks, database instances, hypervisors and storage. Additionally, these tools comprise metrics in real time and perform historical data analysis of the elements they monitor.
Data centre assessments should help establish a road map to achieve the appropriate level of capability, availability, performance and recoverability of the systems supporting your organization’s operational objectives. They can mitigate the risks associated with implementing enhancements to your current infrastructure. Assessments include a virtualization assessment, facilities assessment, network assessment and storage solution assessment.
Currently, your staff is using tools such as Solarwinds, PRTG, Live Optics, Wireshark, Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit and Opengear. Some of these tools only provide information on part of your environment; it may be time to consider a product like Splunk which provides information on your entire operations.
In a multi-vendor environment, you want remote access to monitor and manage your infrastructure centrally. You’ll want to be able to assess your performance, respond to critical alerts and optimize your environment.
A single pane of glass, predictive analytics, insight into system health, anomaly identification, automated processes, dynamic mapping, and reducing business risks are the outcomes of a monitoring and management solution.
Recently, vendors are including data analytics into their products which highlights the importance of collecting data, making changes to respond to what the data is telling you and eventually moving to a direction where automation or machine learning is helping your environment perform optimally. Examples include Cisco with their Digital Network Architecture (DNA), Microsoft with their Business Intelligence as a part of Microsoft Azure or Nutanix with Infosight, helping you to understand your products and environment better.
Written by Puneet Duggal – Solutions Architect, Strategic Solutions and Services team at CDW Canada
With over ten years in the technology industry, Puneet covers enterprise, datacenter, and cloud networking solutions. Further, he conducts network assessments and network implementation services to providing an end-to-end custom solution. Puneet’s primary focus is helping organizations modernize and optimize their network environment, increase business value, and enable business growth.
Puneet holds a Bachelors in Business Administration from York University and has worked on several enterprise process improvement and strategy planning projects. He has helped to implement large-scale solutions and global projects that holistically address challenges and increase competitive advantage.
