Word of the Day: IT monitoring

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms | October 24, 2018 IT monitoring IT monitoring is the process to gather metrics about the operations of an IT environment's hardware and software to ensure everything functions as expected to support applications and services. Basic monitoring is performed through device operation checks, while more advanced monitoring gives granular views on operational statuses, including average response times, number of application instances, error and request rates, CPU usage and application availability. How IT monitoring works IT monitoring covers three sections, called the foundation, software and interpretation. Foundation. The infrastructure is the lowest layer of a software stack and includes physical or virtual devices, such as servers, CPUs and VMs.   Software. This part is sometimes referred to as the monitoring section and analyzes what is working on the devices in the foundation, including CPU usage, load, memory and a running VM count.   Interpretation. Gathered metrics are presented through graphs or data charts, often on a GUI dashboard. IT monitoring can rely on agents or be agentless. Agents are independent programs that install on the monitored device to collect data on hardware or software performance data and report it to a management server. Agentless monitoring uses existing communication protocols to emulate an agent, with many of the same functionalities. For example, to monitor server usage, an IT admin installs an agent on the server. A management server receives that data from the agent and displays it to the user via the IT monitoring software interface, often as a graph of performance over time. If the server stops working as intended, the tool alerts the administrator, who can repair, update or replace the item until it meets the standard for operation. Real-time vs. trends monitoring Real-time monitoring is a technique IT teams use to determine the active and ongoing status of an IT environment through constant data collection and access. Measurements from real-time monitoring software depict data from the current IT environment, as well as the recent past, which enables IT managers to react quickly to current events in the IT ecosystem. Historical monitoring data enables the IT manager to improve the environment or identify potential issues before they occur, because they identify a pattern or trend in data from a period of operation. Trend analysis takes a long-term view of an IT ecosystem to determine system uptimes, service-level agreement adherence and capacity planning. Continue reading... Quote of the Day "An IT monitoring strategy depends on the applications and systems it governs. Static and dynamic thresholds each have benefits and drawbacks, but it's possible to find a balance." - Alastair Cooke Trending Terms agentless real-time monitoring app monitoring log management Nagios Zenoss dynamic and static Learning Center IT pros shore up Prometheus monitoring via third-party tools Prometheus monitoring for Kubernetes lacks key security and reliability features in its raw upstream version, so enterprises turn to third-party integrations from Sysdig, Rancher Labs and Red Hat to bridge the gaps. Monitoring thresholds determine IT performance alerts Monitoring thresholds set a performance bar for applications and systems, but those bars can be as tricky as they are helpful. Manual systems tuning is tiresome, but dynamic tools can misread errors as status quo. How the Nagios monitoring tool tracks IT environment details With a little help from agents and plug-ins, the Nagios monitoring tool makes both active and passive checks on important operating specs about servers, applications and various services. Automated root cause analysis moves into the mainstream Automated root cause analysis has been hyped for more than a year, but DevOps monitoring tools that offer troubleshooting guidance and even predictive analytics are finally in production within mainstream enterprises. IT monitoring strategy, org discipline polish Nasdaq DevOps incident response Shared tools in Nasdaq?s IT monitoring strategy were only half the battle to improve DevOps incident response; the rest was organizational discipline. Quiz Yourself Business activity monitoring provides an immediate real-time monitoring and ____________ capability. a. decisioning b. decision-making Answer Stay in Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed! FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2018 TechTarget. All rights reserved.