Networking Blog

Posts Tagged ‘network’

Remember the old days when networks typically were in one location, used plain old servers and routers, and were homogeneous in nature? In those days, a network monitoring system could take a static approach, where a member of some well-staffed IT department could manually check out each server and switch one at a time.

But nowadays, there is a lot more IT equipment to contend with, the majority of which isn’t even located within the data center. For example, a retailer such as Pacific Sunwear may have 200 devices within its primary data center, but it has more than 7,000 other devices spread across its nearly 950 stores, including such items as video surveillance monitors, routers, and wireless access points. Meanwhile, an airline manufacturer might have hundreds of pieces of equipment on the shop floor, many of which have their own IP addresses.

And IT departments, particularly at small to midsized enterprises, are more overworked than ever before, so old-school network monitoring tools don’t cut it anymore. Given that finding the right network monitoring solution is yet another worry to pile on top of all the other things a data center manager has to remember, such as data security, mobile device management, and email archiving for compliance purposes (and these three were picked out of a hat holding 100 other issues), what criteria should managers keep in mind for choosing the best solution for their businesses?

Concentrate On The Baseline

Traditionally, network monitoring tools tracked the degree of availability within a network and inferred performance by measuring the utilization of server CPUs, memory, and network traffic, says Steve Harriman, vice president of marketing at NetQoS.

However, none of these issues matter if an end user working at a branch office 1,000 miles away from the corporate network is experiencing a 10-second response time when he or she is accustomed to, at most, a two-second one, Harriman says. Moreover, networks are handling many different types of data, all of which have differing characteristics about which traditional monitoring tools simply are clueless.

According to Harriman, the best measure for understanding how to monitor a network is setting baseline metrics in the server infrastructure for “normal” performance. If you have these baselines in place and discover deviations from these metrics, you will have an easier time determining why that eight-second latency has occurred for the aforementioned end user. “It could be because an application was poorly coded or because the application is chatty, with lots of calls to the corporate database before it gets to the end user’s screen,” Harriman says.

Determining this baseline should not be too challenging, as long as you do not overthink it. For example, voice data has strict requirements that are at the same time easy to measure. “Everyone knows when a call is good or not. If they experience a delay, stuttering, or no dial tone, they are going to hang up,” Harriman says.

Automate

For her part, Yankee Group analyst Vanessa Alvarez says that automation is a key criterion for choosing a network monitoring solution because it increases its functionality while lowering the IT resources required to keep abreast of what is taking place on the network. Automation capabilities also make the solution easier to manage and to integrate with systems as a whole, says Alvarez.

CITTIO’s Lerner says that automation is fundamental in any sophisticated IT environment that has multiple locations, incorporates a range of different devices, and is increasingly heterogeneous in nature. “You don’t really see 100% Microsoft or Cisco [setups] anymore, and a static approach makes things that much harder,” he says.

Web servers like patients which need care. But it is impossible to watch by the server for round the clock. So there is another way. We can use website monitoring and network monitoring service. There is a lot of different website monitoring services both paid and free but it is rather more reliable to use paid website, network and server monitoring services, because you know for what you pay. When we chose website monitoring we have to pay attention

1. Does website monitoring company have monitoring checkpoints in different places of the Earth?
2. Does the list of services which provided by website and web server monitoring company includes control of HTTP, POP3, IMAP4, FTP, DNS and etc. Pay attention on quality of provided statistics.
3. Does service include such tools as Ping, Traceroute, DNS Query and etc?
4. Does website server service support notifications by email, ICQ or SMS? Is it possible to check your website statistics using WAP?
5. Is system of reports usable and clear? This factor is very important because you will have to analyze this statistics and to make summary.

This system is intended for monitoring of both one and numerous services, which are placed both in local and global networks. Ganglia uses RDD tool for information storage and a number of libraries for representation. One of the most features is opportunity to use history logs to get to know about server performance for the last year, month, day, hour. Another brilliant feature is possibility to use different platforms. This packet includes two components:
Modules which collect information are allotted to different servers.
Central concentrator, which accumulates this data (Windows module is absent at present day)
This packet gives an opportunity to use multilevel concentrators, for example if you have 3 segments you can provide each segment with single concentrator, besides you can use central concentrator for this purpose. The system allows data transfer using two protocols Multicast and Unicast.

Alchemy Eye Pro – very useful software for network monitoring. It controls network server and performance continuously. In cases of faults it can notify network administrator by SMS or email. It also helps to protect and to improve network performance. It includes ICMP network monitoring, NT Event log monitoring, HTTP(S)/FTP URL internet monitoring, NT Service State server monitoring, Oracle server monitoring, MS SQL server monitoring, SQL monitoring, external monitoring, file existence monitoring, NetBios Lan monitoring, SMTP/POP3 mail monitoring, IPX/SPX file monitoring, VBScript monitoring, Telnet Server monitoring, NNTP Server monitoring, IMAP mail server monitoring, BDE server monitoring, LDAP server monitoring, TCP/IP monitoring.

The website being a part of IT world plays the important role in development and promotion of business. The most important currency in internet is attention of users. Site which has problems with loading, execution are not attractive for visitors. Furthermore your website is your face in the Internet and site which is often inaccessible loses constant partners.
The only way to be fully confident is to use website monitoring and website server monitoring.
Website monitoring service helps you to be sure the web site is accessible, has proper content, and is maintaining good performance. There are a number of companies which provide such services. One of the leading companies in this sphere is Dotcom-monitor. They provide next services:

Website monitoring

Dotcom-Monitor has remote agents which are positioned around the world and the have an opportunity to work like an Internet browser. They will start website monitoring and server monitoring immediately after creation of an account. Website monitoring service by Dotcom-monitor has some specific features which distinguish it from other services, such as
Accessibility & Availability Check
Performance Check
Content Check
Form Submission
Secure Sites
Server Digital Certificates
Client Digital Certificate
Cookie Support.

Network Monitoring

Due to this service you are kept informed about your network’s status, availability and performance of network applications. There are a lot of network monitoring tools but I’ll list the most important: FTP Monitoring Service, POP3 Monitoring Service, SMTP Monitoring Service, SMTP/POP3 Monitoring Service, DNS Monitoring Service, DNS Blacklist Monitoring, Ping/ICMP Monitoring Service, Port Monitoring Service, Web Service SOAP/HTTP Monitoring Service, UDP Monitoring Service, Temperature Monitoring Service and Custom Script Monitoring Service.

Web Load Stress Test

With the growth of your site the number of loads on your website, web applications and network infrastructure grow too. This service helps us to get information about such important points as:
Position of bottlenecks on your site.
Performing of website under certain loads.
A number of users can you site handle.

As I have already mentioned there is a great number of different companies such as site24x7, Mon.itor.us, HostTracker. You can also try them but I have been used it for two years and I have no any complaint.