Monitoring The Heart of Your Business: 3 Things You Must Monitor on Your Network

  

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

Network monitoring is an investment in your business’s future and is especially vital for any business that relies on technology for day-to-day business operations.

What should be monitored on your network?  Whether you are learning how to watch your business’ network or you are looking into hiring someone to do it for you, it is important to know what exactly to monitor.

1. Endpoint Connectivity.  Managing endpoint connectivity is a fundamental part network management.  It is keeping watch in real-time, or close to real-time, that your endpoint nodes are connected.
2. Switch Management.  Management of your network’s various switchpoints should be kept as central as possible, as all these elements are intertwined.  In a complex network environment, it is vital that all ports, QoS, VLANs, etc. be monitored and accounted for to properly and efficiently attack a network issue.  
   Many large and mid-sized businesses who want the features of a large scale IT department without the private costs, outsource their network monitoring to businesses who manage multiple networks in a specially designed NOC (network operation center), providing the necessary redundancy, security, and environmental controls.
3. Server Connectivity.  Server connectivity blocks are common and frustrating to end users.  VM (virtual machine) management, remote connections, port-specific services (such as HTTP, or SQL) should be continually monitored.

Visibility into your network is critical in all IT environments.  Network monitoring allows you to stay ahead of network issues before they become service impacting events.

BONUS TIPS:

1. 24x7x365 monitoring is key.  The best monitoring plans include an around-the-clock  watch, respond, resolve process.  
2. Systems don’t solve problems, people do.  Monitoring software will alert your business to a problem or potential problem but it is important to have someone watching and responding to issues in your network 24x7x365.
3. Fix the root of the problem.  Creating a proactive system that discovers issues before they become service impacting problems is the goal, but the key to a successful monitoring system is one that both monitors your network and seizes opportunities for network improvement.

API Digital has built a strong business around this monitoring process.  Our group continually and systematically looks for issues, quickly responds, and then creates a process to permanently resolve an issue.  Our experience and expertise in proactive enterprise and telecommunications network monitoring is the reason why smart large and mid-sized business choose API Digital to be a vital part of their IT solution plan.