What is Server Monitoring?

Servers enable the provision of various applications, services, and functions in the IT infrastructure and often take on critical tasks. Failure translates into difficulties for the company and the bottom line.

One of the reasons why they are extremely important for organizations is that in networked environments, many other systems can be affected by the malfunction or overload of a server.

When a server doesn't work to its maximum capacity, files or programs cannot be executed as usual. This disrupts user interaction, leading to employee and customer dissatisfaction. The result translates into inefficient work processes and customers who migrate to the competition where they are offered better digital interaction.

When employees can't perform their tasks, and customers can't complete their orders or generate the necessary conversions, companies lose income.

The server monitoring tool used should alert the responsible system administrator if an error or problem occurs so that they can react immediately.

Once the right people are informed, the procedure should be applied. This includes approaching the department or professionals that should identify a solution.

When using server monitoring tools, it is also possible to predict developments based on historical data and anticipate possible bottlenecks in the future, for example in storage capacities, and take appropriate countermeasures.

Monitoring is often seen as part of server management. However, server management also includes the regular application of updates and security patches, the installation of new devices, and the correction and elimination of problems.

It also keeps track of the provision of sufficient resources for the daily requirements. Planning of server capacities, for example, is part of it.

Excluding the setup of new systems, a powerful server monitoring tool can support all these described server management tasks.

In addition to monitoring the health and performance of systems and identifying problems, server monitoring can provide information about the server's hardware and installed software and their patch levels, depending on data availability.

This makes it possible to see when updates or patches have not yet been installed on a system.
By comparing this with historical monitoring data, trends and developments can also be read for the future. This information is in turn useful for capacity planning.

As with any other software, monitoring systems also come in the usual variations:

This monitoring solution is installed on a separate system in the IT infrastructure or connected to the network servers as a hardware appliance. Depending on the server monitoring tool and the devices to be monitored, the configuration effort can vary.

However, this customizability of the solution does not have to be a disadvantage.
In addition, with an on-premises solution, you retain control over your data, since it is also stored on-site.

In contrast to the on-premises option, some server monitoring tools can be obtained as a service from cloud providers. In this case, configuration and administration are usually managed via a web interface.

Since no software has to be installed on the company's server infrastructure, the installation is often relatively quick.

The advantage of the SaaS variant is that these are usually good for monitoring cloud and microservice infrastructures and are distributed via a subscription, which can also be flexibly canceled.

However, it becomes more difficult when a company needs to monitor IT assets in the cloud and on-premises. Transferring the monitoring data of these systems to the cloud often involves additional configuration effort. Data transfer to the cloud also results in higher costs.

Especially when monitoring SNMP devices, large amounts of data are generated that have to be transferred to the cloud. 
At the same time, one should be aware that with a cloud solution, the monitoring data is located with a third-party provider, which may violate data protection guidelines.

In general, monitoring systems are not provided as mobile applications.

However, it is more common for manufacturers of monitoring tools to offer their users access to dashboards and monitoring data via a mobile application. These often have fewer functions than the user interface of the PC version, though.

For the monitoring tool to get the data it needs, it must be able to retrieve it from the server. Therefore, it is necessary that the solution supports all commonly used operating systems and monitors all services. Furthermore, the solution must support both virtual and on-premises systems.

Another point is easily configurable alarm management. This includes the setting of sensible thresholds and the method of notification should an error or warning occur.

For a server to function, several areas interact: the hardware and operating system layers, as well as the application layer. A good monitoring tool not only indicates that a problem is occurring but also offers the possibility of viewing the problem in context, in which it represents certain dependencies, for example.

The true value of a solution is directly related to its usability. For a monitoring solution, it is important that the software is easy to use and also provides powerful dashboards for visualizing the monitoring data. This makes it possible to see all important areas of a server at a glance and to react immediately to errors or problems.

Support is an important issue, especially in the enterprise field. Therefore, in the decision-making process, you should always check how easy it is to contact support in the event of problems.

Security orchestration should be taken into account, as it is important to ensure that measures are taken to prevent challenges like data loss or cybersecurity threats.