Let’s imagine that you really need a car, and you head off to a car dealership to buy one for yourself. Let’s also assume this is your first car, and you don’t know much about cars. On getting to the dealership, you’ll need to choose which type of car you want. Now, you’re not very knowledgeable about the different drive mechanisms of a car, whether it’s a gasoline-powered or electric vehicle. What’s more, you don’t know the specifications of the vehicle you need. All you know is that you just need a car to get around. In this scenario, you’ll definitely make grave errors in the choice of the vehicle you’ll buy.
We can also apply this analogy to software development. For instance, if you’re part of a software development firm and you go shopping for server monitoring software, you’ll need to be careful. This is because the goals of server monitoring are to aid operations and improve overall productivity. Therefore, when engineers are on the lookout for server monitoring software, they’ll have to bear some specifications in mind. Also, there are some basic capabilities they expect the software to have based on their specific needs.
This article highlights the capabilities of server monitoring software to look out for. Also, it guides engineers on how to compare types of server monitoring software.
Are you ready? Let’s start with a brief overview of what server monitoring entails.
What Is Server Monitoring?
Servers are the backbone of every IT infrastructure and operation. As such, it’s important to monitor servers regularly, so you can understand how they’re faring at any given point. This is what server monitoring is all about.
Server monitoring means gaining visibility into what’s going on in your servers. This lets you track the performance of your servers. It helps to gather information as to what the server’s up to. For instance, you can measure server efficiency and expose risks capable of breaking down the overall system.
The Need for Server Monitoring
Without proper measurement of certain key performance indicators, a software development firm can never ascertain its level of growth. Also, without that measurement, it’s impossible to tell how well their end users embrace their products. However, by monitoring servers, developers can gather metrics that help keep the firm on track.
Here’s why it’s necessary for firms to monitor their servers.
- Monitoring helps to ascertain the state and accessibility of the server. Is it up and running properly as intended?
- Regular monitoring lets you check for error occurrences and alerts.
- Let’s talk about predictive capabilities: A well-monitored server will give predictive information on certain aspects of itself. This includes the storage capacity of the disks, whether the server is almost full, or even when a crash is likely to happen.
- It’s also helpful in ascertaining the response time for activities that users initiate. This is a great way to collect user experiences and feedback.
What’s Server Monitoring Software?
How can you stay on track with all that’s happening in your servers? There are software solutions specially dedicated to the monitoring of servers and their components. People call this server monitoring software or just server monitors.
These are software tools that help you to ensure that your servers run all your applications smoothly and effortlessly. They achieve this by vigorously monitoring the various processes going on within the various server components, such as the CPU, memory, network, and storage. The tools either let you know that all is going okay or alert you of imminent danger. The tools provide metrics containing useful information that the DevOps engineer can rely on for sound decision making.
Going back to our initial analogy, there are lots of car brands such as Tesla, BMW, Ford, and so on. Similarly, there are lots of server monitors out there. How can engineers make the right choice that yields the best results?
Choosing a Server Monitoring Software
Choosing the right software largely depends on the details of your work and what you plan to achieve. However, there are some capabilities that a server monitoring software must have in order to be a great fit. Here are the capabilities to be on the lookout for.
Ease of Use
User experience is a great factor to consider when sourcing a tool. If the tool is difficult to use, people will stay away from it. This idea also applies to IT firms. Why would any firm want to purchase a tool they can’t use?
Ask yourself: How user-friendly is the server monitoring dashboard that you’re considering? It must be easy to use when monitoring events and should have the ability to notify you quickly if there’s a problem.
Alert Management
Monitoring software should be able to notify its users effectively when there’s a problem. For instance, the software needs to break logs into warnings and errors. This way, the firm can see what warnings and errors their users are facing. Also, how does the tool handle and deliver alerts? It has to be quick.
Diversity in Coverage
It’s important to note the server type that the software was built to cover. For example, it’ll be better to get a server that has support for all server types, whether cloud-based or on-premises servers. This way, your organization doesn’t incur more expenses choosing a new server when you scale. Also, it’s better to check if the server monitor can collect, analyze, and collate all the metrics of interest. This will help to eliminate regrets. Think about what you need, what your organization needs, and how each type of server monitoring can make your life and your colleagues’ lives easier.
Setup and Maintenance
Sometimes, firms end up with server monitors that are more expensive to maintain than the purchase cost. For instance, maintenance costs in the form of payment for outside experts to repair server monitors can become overwhelming. Firms should get server monitors that suit their financial needs. Therefore, it makes sense to go for a server monitor that’s easy to set up for use and requires less maintenance.
Technical Support
It also makes sense to go for a server monitor that has a development team that’s readily available. This team can provide technical support in case you need it at any given point. This way, your organization doesn’t have to run helter-skelter when the server monitor is broken.
Introducing Netreo
As the software development industry keeps growing rapidly, most enterprises now need to run plenty of servers. These servers must be monitored so as to glean useful information about their performances. And that’s where server monitoring software comes in.
There are a lot of options for server monitoring software available right now. Making the right choice when it comes to this tool is a step in the right direction for growth in your firm.
For top-notch server monitoring, consider Netreo.
It’s your all-in-one shop for everything related to observability and monitoring. On server monitoring, Netreo promises greater visibility into your server performance, use, and health. It helps remove the headaches of human intervention through superb automation. This gives you greater alert accuracy and a view of your overall environment through the interactive and user-friendly dashboard.
Check out Netreo’s server management solutions. You can also schedule a demo.
This post was written by Ukpai Ugochi. Ukpai is a full stack JavaScript developer (MEVN), and she contributes to FOSS in her free time. She loves to share knowledge about her transition from marine engineering to software development to encourage people who love software development and don’t know where to begin.