The Power of a Seamless Server Monitoring Tool

Back in the day, implementing new servers meant a hefty investment in data centers, hardware and additional technical management efforts. In the ever-evolving cloud-based enterprise computing ecosystem, the tech companies can access additional servers to reduce overhead costs. A multitude of cloud-based service providers such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) enable businesses to expand their networking, storage and servers with maximized cost efficiency. 

With the transformation from legacy practices to cloud-focused enterprise computing systems, security is a pressing concern and each additional network or cloud-based application sparks a potential cyber threat. In order to maintain the security of the data on cloud-based applications, additional networks and servers, proper monitoring practices require to be in place. It is also important that organizations continuously monitor the performance of servers, ensure availability of servers and maintain high-security. Reducing unplanned downtime can play a vital role in giving customers an optimized user experience and enhance customer retention rates.

Tech organizations that purely depend on cloud-based solutions should continuously track servers to stabilize performance and maintain security of the cloud-servers and as such, it is important to implement server monitoring solutions that enable accurate maintenance. Although server monitoring can be utilized to track different aspects of a cloud-based company or solution based on the type of server, the key objective of server monitoring is to protect the server from potential threats, failures and technical discrepancies that may result in interrupted services. 

Server monitoring depends on the software solutions and  the cloud-based servers which need to be monitored. A server monitoring tool should ideally be scalable and should have the capability to regularly collect data from multiple cloud-based servers. 

Implementation and workflow of server monitoring

Workflows of server monitoring tools differ from one to another so, an organization must firstly identify the most important data points on each server that needs to be tracked. For example, the most crucial data point which needs to be tracked on an application server is it’s responsiveness, the latency and data loss of a data storage server and the speed on a web server just to name a few. Once these data points are identified depending on the server, it is important to set baseline values and thresholds to measure the performance of each server. In most cases, the first or the initial value of performance is considered the baseline performance value which the performance of the server will be measured against in future. Next, an organization must take necessary measures to configure data collection and analysis by ensuring the selected server monitoring tool is configured to pull data from the cloud-based servers. A server auto-generates event logs otherwise referred to as log files, which contain logs about user activity, application errors or failures, events related to security and other events which take place on the server. A powerful and well engineered log server monitoring tool should have the ability to swiftly stream the log files, track operating system details such as disk drives and performance, CPU memory availability, network connectivity, CPU usage, traffic and uptime on websites, and events. Unusual event logs can mean that a system is at a security risk or a discrepancy in the network or infrastructure exists. In order to detect such unusual events, a server monitoring tool should be set up in a way that it triggers an alert to notify the responsible team as soon as the performance drops below the set baseline values or detects any discrepancy related to the defined data points. In such events, the team should be readily available to respond to the alerts by investigating, analyzing the cause of each alert and finding solutions to the issues ensuring minimal downtime. They can also have backup solutions or workarounds to get the servers up and running temporarily until the issue has a permanent fix.

Once a company implements an orderly workflow during and after the implementation of a powerful server monitoring tool, they can reap the benefits of their investment by keeping the network and infrastructure stable and secure, responding to operational issues promptly and reducing downtime. 

Nagios Log Server

Powerful log monitoring tools and management applications such as Nagios LS enables organizations to quickly view, sort and configure logs from any source, on any given network. The Nagios Log Server enables users to gain a performance snapshot of their network’s infrastructure by allowing them to analyze, collect and store log data. This powerful server monitoring tool is configured to receive Windows event logs, Linux syslogs, network device syslogs and other log information from any Windows and Linux machine. 

Benefits of Nagios Log Server

User-friendly

• Simplifies the overall process of searching log data. 
• Rapid alerting and notification systems 
• Quick configuration through easy source wizards

Adaptable and Scalable 

• Easily integrate with third-party solutions on existing infrastructure
• Fully accessible API enabling complete integration of external applications
• Easy addition of Nagios Log Server instances to monitoring cluster
• Quick addition of power, speed and storage to overall log analysis platform
• Adapt with a click of a button

Real-time data

• Correlate log events within a matter of clicks
• View log data in real time, investigate, analyze issues and provide solutions immediately

Network Security

• Define key thresholds and get notified through the web-interface
• Notify users via Nagios XI/Nagios Core, email, SNMP traps or execute a script for rapid problem resolution
• Retain historical archives of all events and comply with security requirements

Multiple User Management

• Advanced multi-user capabilities enable IT teams to work efficiently
• Modify, add, remove users and set access permissions
• Grant authorized access to the external API via an access key

Custom Dashboards

• Create a custom dashboard in the web-interface to gain a quick snapshot of important data.
• Share dashboards with a custom URL 
• Powerful GUI that facilitates customization of layout, design and preferences on a per-user basis

Network Insights

• Provides users with advanced awareness of their infrastructure
• Detailed reports on network events, logs and security
• Minimize security threats with a sensitive alerting system
• Quick resolution of network related issues

Nagios Log Server is licensed based on the number of cluster Instances you implement in your environment. A Nagios Log Server system consists of any number of cluster server Instances and Instance communicates with other instances to both replicate/backup data as well as load-balance a system to maintain an efficient log monitoring system. We guide organizations to swiftly implement Nagios Log Server system to ensure a smooth transition to a powerful server monitoring tool which enhances overall business potential by increasing customer satisfaction with minimal downtime.