To talk about network monitoring, we first need to explain what a network is and also how it works. A few years ago, of course, it was possible to imagine a business with manual transactions and the use of technology only for some automation and machines.
Nowadays, it is impossible to talk about companies or any other type of organization without thinking about the internet.
Thus, it is through her that everything works.
What is the network?
A computer network, or data network, is a set of connected machines capable of exchanging information and resources with each other.
For example, printers, emails, internet, among others.
And these connections can be made in two ways: the wired network (wired networks) or wireless network (wireless networks).
This exchange of information must be secure in such a way as to ensure the integrity of both the company, the users, and the data to be transmitted.
For this, the network monitoring services are used. Through some specific software for this purpose, it is possible to control everything that happens.
What is network monitoring?
Managing a computer network without monitoring the network is like flying a plane without instruments.
A major challenge for network administrators and IT analysts responsible for infrastructure is to ensure that IT articles are available in such a way that the lowest possible level of disruption to these services occurs.
The vast majority of companies, whether medium or large, end up with a service contract to constantly evaluate the quality goals of these services. Know more information about the network monitoring job description and salary details.
High service availability brings reduced downtime.
Downtime is the time of a broken network, server downtime due to a service that is not working, an update that was not well implemented, among others.
As a result, it brings losses to the company.
To illustrate: Imagine a company that operates by selling online services. Then during a black Friday period, one of your servers crashes due to a problem that was not being observed.
The amount of lost sales is likely to bring huge losses that could be avoided if the network were being monitored.
For this reason, the company needs to have tools that continuously monitor the network to avoid problems and bring bad user experiences.
Tools for network monitoring:
Why is network monitoring important?
There are some tools available in the market that perform the network monitoring service. Are they:
- Solarwinds
- ManageEngine OpManager
- WhatsUp Gold 2017
- Nagios XI
- Zabbix
Solarwinds
This tool, besides being easy to set up, takes little time to get ready.
Soon network devices are identified and deployed.
It is one of the easiest user interfaces to oversee a complete network. IT professionals for IT professionals created it.
It also dynamically calculates baseline limits from historical network performance data.
It is not free; the value depends on the need and quantity of modules to be purchased.
According to the site, its main features are:
- Multivendor network monitoring
- Network Insight for in-depth visibility
- Smart maps
- NetPath and PerfStack for Easy Troubleshooting
- Smarter scalability for large environments
- Advanced Alerting
ManageEngine OpManager
This tool is a complete solution for peer-to-peer network monitoring.
It offers performance management and monitoring capabilities for all critical IT resources such as routers, WAN links, switches, firewalls, VoIP paths, physical servers, virtual servers, domain controllers, and other infrastructure devices.
Allows monitoring of packet loss, response time, and other metrics.
Manages IP addresses and tracks the switch ports and devices attached to them.
It costs $ 595 and allows use on up to 25 devices.
WhatsUp Gold 2017
Created by Ipswitch, it ensures complete monitoring of servers, networks, and virtual machines.
Its features simplify and optimize the tasks of IT professionals.
It is a low-cost tool that allows you to monitor the entire environment from one license.
WhatsUp Gold enables you to detect, visualize, and interact with your IT environment through advanced visualization technology and accelerate troubleshooting, workflows, and interactive maps.
Nagios XI
Aimed at a wide audience, it can be used not only by large corporations but also by freelance professionals.
As such, it is one of the most flexible on the market and focuses on monitoring.
Although easy to install, it takes some time to complete adaptation. It does not automatically detect devices and requires manual configuration of each.
It has a free version, open-source, single license or subscription.
The starting price of the paid edition starts at $ 1.99.
Zabbix
It is an open-source monitoring tool for a variety of IT components, including networks, servers, virtual machines, and cloud services.
It is one of the most popular and provides metrics for monitoring, network utilization, CPU load, and disk space consumption.
It is fully configurable, and its speciality is trend monitoring and functionality.
That is, it can predict traffic trends and, thereby, future network behaviour based on historical data.
Because it is open-source, it has a large community of users around the world.
Why is network monitoring important?
Computer networks are getting bigger and more complex, so organizations need to pay special attention to aspects that didn’t exist before.
This observation of the network is essential to prevent possible failures or verify a malfunction.
Knowing all the strengths and weaknesses of your network makes it easier to make decisions so that it is not vulnerable.
Therefore, identifying the root of the problem and resulting in faster resolution alerts the responsible professionals that they can prevent them from happening next time.
According to research, monitoring IT environments, in addition to having several benefits, each day is gaining more space. Thus, it is necessary always to be updated on the news and technologies that debut in the market.
Leave a comment