When it comes to “haunted” data centres, monitoring is your best defence (sorry, Ghostbusters!).
Have you ever scratched your head wondering why your virtualisation technology is acting up, your Unified Computing seems to have a mind of its own or your hyper-converged infrastructure just won’t do what your admins want it to? Sometimes it can seem like your data centre is haunted by mischievous ghosts. The benefits of new technology are many, but sometimes it can wreak havoc on your data centre infrastructure. So, “if there’s somethin’ strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?” We’ve got something better than the Ghostbusters.
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Comprehensive IT monitoring allows IT admins and data centre operators to keep an eye on their entire IT infrastructure. These tools monitor the availability of devices, computers, services and even virtual systems round the clock. They query the object’s status as well as environmental variables, security factors and technical functions via a standard interface.
To ensure building security, various safety and security systems are also integrated into the monitoring environment, such as locking systems, smoke and gas detectors, temperature sensors and surveillance cameras.
Monitoring sensors send the data collected to a central installation, where an easy-to-read dashboard presents the information to the appropriate employee. Admins are alerted if any values reach or exceed pre-defined thresholds or if any unforeseen events occur. Alerts can be issued by text message or e-mail as well, ensuring that staff is always up to date and able to nip any irregularities in the bud before they become a true problem.
Keep it simple.
To keep the workload manageable for your IT team, look for monitoring software that supports as many data centre components as possible straight out of the box. Of course, this is only feasible if your devices and applications are fairly common. That’s why it’s important that your monitoring solution also includes an API and templates that make it possible—and easy—to support all components.
Get rid of those ghosts for good.
While strange things can happen in your data centre, network monitoring takes the mystery out of them. Keeping an eye on your infrastructure at all times will help you identify the warning signs of an impending issue so you can take care of it in time. It also reveals long-term trends, thereby enabling you to plan for the future and prevent bottlenecks. So you can send your data centre ghosts packing.
PRTG Network Monitor by Paessler is a monitoring solution that provides all these benefits and features out of the box. In addition, PRTG offers RESTful API and templates to ensure older or niche devices are also covered. Test a full version of the software for 30 days: www.paessler.com
