Overview of IT Monitoring

Information Technology (IT), the infrastructure that underpins a modern enterprise can take on a set of complex architectural form factors: virtual, software-defined, hybrid and multi-cloud data center deployments, and in and out of corporate headquarters. It’s important to monitor how well your infrastructure is performing, since every IT second of downtime or interruptions can cost companies millions of dollars in profit opportunities.

IT Monitoring :
Generally task monitoring refers to keep eye on the ongoing task. Similarly, IT Monitoring refers to the process of keeping eye on IT environment by gathering metrics around IT system hardware and software operations to ensure everything is working perfectly. Actually it helps in providing better support to applications and services. Basic monitoring is implemented by device operation checking, while more advanced monitoring provide perfect views of operating states, including average response times, number of application instances, error and request rates, CPU usage, and application availability.

How does IT the monitoring work ?
This IT Monitoring has 3 divisions:

1. Foundation : The infrastructure is the lowest layer in the software package and includes physical or virtual hardware, such as the CPU and VM servers.
2. Software : This part is sometimes referred to as the monitoring section and analyzes what is working on the hardware in the main, including CPU usage, load, memory, and the number of virtual machines running.
3. Interpretation : Aggregated metrics are presented via graphs or datagrams , often on the GUI dashboard. This is often achieved through integration with tools that focus specifically on data visualization.

Different kinds of IT Monitoring :
For better clarity on IT ecosystem and business performance different types of IT monitoring can be used strategically.IT Monitoring types can include many of IT organization functions.
Below list represents some common types of IT monitoring :

1. System Monitoring :
System observance evaluates the performance of infrastructure parts at the physical layer of the network System observance is additionally stated as handiness observance, handling metrics like server time period and electronic equipment performance.

2. Dependency Monitoring :
Applications running over distributed IT infrastructure may be captivated with a range of network nodes, alternative application parts, and services. These dependencies area unit mapped by evaluating the incoming network connections.  

3. Web performance Monitoring :
This observance evaluates the moving components of your web-based service, like websites, specifically however the service responds to a user-request at the client-side of the network. Measurements embody page load speed, knowledge transmission errors, loading errors, and more.

4. Integration and API Monitoring :
Modern apps and services have confidence external integrations for processing, resource capability, and alternative purposeful processes. Integration observance is employed to spot the provision and time period performance of third-party integrations.

5. Application Performance Monitoring (APM) :
Applications area unit considerably a part of the fashionable business. APM observes however well the apps behave within the current state of the IT surroundings. The scope of observance is extended to the underlying infrastructure parts and dependencies.  

6. Real User Monitoring (RUM) :
Applications behave within the world otherwise from the tightly controlled take a look at simulations surroundings. RUM is meant to record such interactions and supply the historical performance of a service delivered to end-users over the network.

7. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) :
Business activity is extremely correlative with IT infrastructure and network performance. IT observance that evaluates resource consumption and traffic behavior helps businesses verify the corresponding business activities. 

8. Security Monitoring :
Security attacks and network infringements impact the flow of information traffic and network behaviour. Uncommon activities may be tracked against outlined policies of knowledge access and authorization.  

IT Monitoring tool options :
Other tools are specifically designed to monitor network performance or CPU etc. Some monitoring tools include AI capabilities.
The following lists only provide some examples of the different types of monitoring tools. However, these lists are not exhaustive, and many of the tools include capabilities commonly seen in other sectors, such as AI or the ability to track the cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

• APM tools : Cisco AppDynamics, BMC TrueSight, Microsoft Azure Application Insights, Datadog, Dynatrace, ManageEngine Applications Manager etc.
• IT Infrastructure tools : Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), LogicMonitor, VMware vRealize Operations, ManageEngine OpManager etc.
• Cloud monitoring tools : Amazon CloudWatch, Microsoft Azure Monitor, Cisco CloudCenter, Oracle Application Performance Monitoring Cloud Service etc.
• Containers / Microservices / Distributed Application Monitoring Tools : Jaeger, Kafka, Lightstep etc.
• AIops tools : BigPanda, Moogsoft,  New Relic, Datadog, Dynatrace etc.
• Log monitoring tools : Fluent, Flexi stack, sumo and sumo logic etc.
• Network security monitoring tools : Cisco DNA Analytics and Assurance, LogRhythm, LiveAction LiveNX etc.

Benefits of IT monitoring :

1. Helps during IT environment upgradation.
2. Helps in early detection of problems.
3. Helps in avoiding network outages.
4. Helps in recognizing security threats.
5. Helps in profit and development of business.
6. Helps in improving IT resources reliability.
7. Helps in performing end to end resource and service monitoring.
8. Helps in providing better user experience.

Disadvantages of IT monitoring :
There are few disadvantages of IT monitoring, but which are negligible.

1. Requires a special dedicated team for IT monitoring.
2. Requires special software for IT monitoring.
3. Requires trained professionals to perform IT monitoring.