As ACC run our own fully managed enterprise hosting operation – insanely comprehensive IT monitoring is not a luxury, it’s absolutely essential for us and is the key to keeping on top of a large high performance hosting solution.
Originally deployed to simply tell engineers when systems were either up or down, since then, monitoring systems have come a long way. Today’s modern IT monitoring system has gained the intelligence to flag up ‘unusual’ behaviour, which adds an element of issue prediction into the solution. So a better IT monitoring solution is one which helps you detect and avoid systems going down in the first place, this means you can work to resolve future problems in a more controlled and ‘scheduled’ basis – a far more healthy approach for all concerned plus without the added element of stress there will be far less chance of mistake / knock on or failure cascades.
There are two types of monitoring solution which ACC deploy and work with on a daily basis:
Paessler PRTG is undeniably the best IT ‘landscape’ IT network monitoring solution in the world. This is the solution you need to monitor your individual assets, from phones & printers to firewalls and storage clusters. Being priced on a per sensor (not per device) customers are not penalised for running more systems – you only pay for what you monitor, and there are no add on costs for types of sensor either. For more information about this solution please see our PRTG product section.
Once you have your entire landscape mapped and monitored – giving you a ‘wide angle’ view of your IT systems – you may feel the need to ‘zoom in’ on a number of core servers that run more critical operations in your business. For this we would recommend NewRelic APM. This solution is invaluable for giving you extremely deep information about the goings on deep inside web, application and database servers. Is it a bug? Something malicious? Perhaps an external factor. APM will tell you. You can read more about New Relic APM over in it’s dedicated product section.
By adopting this dual approach strategy – of deploying both wide view and close in monitoring solutions, with Paessler PRTG and New Relic, you will find running IT operations considerably less stressful and more successful!