Before purchasing server monitoring software several questions have to be answered by a business to be able to pick the right software product. A few of these questions should be prioritized as they are the most important before picking software to monitor a data center or computer network.
The software should be able to run custom scripts that assist the network administrator and automate processes. Many monitoring applications only report about problems but do not provide the means to react on them. Good software will provide the means to include scripts that will react and try to fix the issue automatically.
A well written monitor will allow for reaction by the application and call scripts, tasks or commands to initiate a fix or gather information. It will eliminate any delays that may occur during the notification process and stay ahead of production outages.
The software should also be capable of monitoring different operating systems. Many companies and business have multiple operating systems running depending on the purpose of the server or network computer. There might be Windows desktop computers, Linux print servers and also switches, printers, routers, firewalls and any other kind of hardware which might be monitored by server monitoring programs.
It is always important to consider the complete computer network or data center when looking to purchase server monitoring software. Another important aspect of every software monitoring software should be the use of common data types to be able to process the data in third party applications and to make it easier to switch to a different kind of monitoring application if the need should arise.
Lastly trend analysis is something that every monitoring software should offer as it can be used to prevent certain issues before they happen. A lot of time can be saved in the mitigation process to cut down on production outages.
The trend analysis can be an excellent source of information to assist the network administrators in the mitigation process as they can monitor the important parameters like cpu usage, hard drive storage capacities and computer memory utilization.
The monitoring software should be able to keep track of any configured and several default events and incidents that occur like reboots, hangs or blue screens. Graphs should be provided so that it becomes easier to track down cpu spikes, hard drive capacity issues, bandwidth limitations, memory climbs and other problems more easily.
The server monitoring application can be and often is the platform for your IT environment to grow and expand while supporting the foundation of your business and in saving the mighty dollar. It will also make sure you sleep on weekends.
