Do you know how your company's servers are performing? We rely on our servers daily for work and productivity, but we can't take them for granted as a critical component of business infrastructure. As such, server monitoring is vital for ensuring your servers’ stability, security, and performance.
With that in mind, let’s look at server monitoring and remote server monitoring tools that can help you ensure a healthy business environment.
What is Server Monitoring?
Server monitoring is the surveillance and analysis of a business’s servers’ performance, availability, and security. It’s important for detecting and fixing potential issues, minimizing downtime, and ensuring your teams will be able to work efficiently without technical issues slowing them down.
Server monitoring is an ongoing process, constantly screening for potential issues as they appear. This allows IT teams to quickly address problems and identify anomalies so they can nip any issues in the bud.
Typically, server monitoring includes uptime and downtime, disk usage, network statistics, connection status, and metrics like CPU utilization.
Why Server Monitoring Is Vital for Preventing Downtime
Nothing slows down productivity quite like downtime. When a server goes down, work across the company slows to a crawl until it's fixed. Fortunately, server monitoring can keep downtime at a minimum.
Monitoring network servers allows IT teams to detect potential issues as soon as they appear, including slow speeds and connectivity issues. It allows them to be proactive and fix problems before they create downtime, rather than being reactive and trying to repair the damage done.
Any issues that server monitoring detects can be addressed quickly before they cause any damage. As a result, IT systems remain stable and perform optimally, uptime improves, and IT teams can properly manage their resource utilization.
Fundamentals of Server Management & Monitoring
If you want to improve your server management and monitoring, there are a few fundamentals and key concepts to consider. These cover basic tasks, such as security and updates, which are essential for a healthy server environment.
First, keeping software updated is essential. This ensures the software on your server has the latest improvements, patches, and updates to improve performance and protect against vulnerabilities.
Additionally, you’ll want to monitor your server’s CPU usage, memory, disk space, and so forth. This will help identify any areas starting to falter or inefficiencies, so you can quickly address the problems before they escalate.
Security is also of the utmost importance. Good cybersecurity includes using tools like firewalls and antivirus programs, plus training users on password security and setting up multi-factor authentication.
Speaking of user training, employees should also be well-versed in reporting and troubleshooting technical issues. While IT teams have the training and knowledge to diagnose and address problems, it helps to have informed employees who can accurately describe the issues they encounter.
Exploring Server Management Systems
Server management systems are vital for server monitoring. They automate monitoring and management, including updates, patch installations, and tracking metrics and applications. This streamlines IT operations and reduces the manual workloads administrators must manage while maintaining server performance, security, and uptime.
Server management systems need to track performance metrics, monitor applications within the server, and watch the overall network health and stability. Doing so will help IT teams keep servers running smoothly without spending every second of the day watching for changes.
The Basics of Server Monitoring Tools
With that in mind, we can break down the core features and functionality of server monitoring tools.
As the name suggests, server monitoring tools track and manage servers to ensure they’re fully operational. This includes server uptime and response time (how long it takes for actions users initiate to be acknowledged) and overall server health, performance, and resource utilization. Using real-time monitoring and tracking is key here, as it allows IT teams to respond to potential issues immediately.
The purpose here is to regularly monitor and assess the server to ensure it remains active, works quickly, and responds to input efficiently. This proactive approach helps identify slowdowns or anomalies before they become a significant problem, ensuring optimization and efficiency at all times.
Server Monitoring vs Server Performance Monitoring
You might be wondering: what’s the difference between server monitoring and server performance monitoring? While the two are very similar, there are key differences that must be considered.
Both server monitoring and server performance monitoring deal with server health, but the specifics of what they monitor vary.
Server performance monitoring tracks metrics, such as CPU, memory usage, and network activity. This delves into the data, monitoring the overall health and gaining deep insights into the servers.
Server monitoring, on the other hand, includes broader criteria, such as security and availability. This focuses on the performance elements, such as how fast pages load and uptime, rather than the data behind them.
In other words, server monitoring watches the functions and services to ensure consistent uptime, while server performance monitoring measures how well everything runs and provides analytics. Both, of course, are essential for good server and network health.
Types of Server Monitoring Tools and Systems
Not all server monitoring tools are the same, so you may need different types of tools or systems depending on your business needs and budget.
Types of server monitoring tools and systems include:
Open-source options, whose source codes are publicly available for anyone to use and modify, which tend to be affordable options with core server monitoring functionality.
Commercially available options made by trusted companies tend to have a wide range of features and capabilities.
Basic network monitoring tools, which provide fundamental monitoring features focused on network elements like switches, routers, and hubs.
Specialized tools that track performance metrics like memory utilization, CPU usage, and bandwidth.
IT infrastructure monitoring solutions, which cover not only a server, but entire IT infrastructures, including storage systems, databases, and more.
On-premises solutions, where the software is installed directly into your company servers, giving you more control and ownership over your server monitoring tools.
Cloud-based server monitoring, which uses hosted services to monitor your server, thus reducing infrastructure costs and improving flexibility.
Hybrid systems, which combine on-premises and cloud-based server monitoring to get the best of both worlds.
Which option works best for your organization will depend on your specific needs. As such, it’s important to understand what tools and functionality are most important for your IT teams, although some key features (such as real-time monitoring, alerts, and reporting) are essential regardless.
Key Server Monitoring Metrics for Measuring Performance
When you monitor your servers, there’s no shortage of metrics and data you’ll want to look for. While it can be difficult to know which ones are the most important, these are the key metrics you’ll want to track:
CPU usage: The percentage of time that your server is actively working on tasks.
Memory utilization/RAM status: How much memory space your server has and how much it’s using.
Disk I/O: Your server’s input and output operations measure data transfer speed.
Network activity: How busy your connected network is throughout the day.
Uptime and downtime: How much time your server spends active compared to time spent down and inaccessible.
Server load: The average number of processes waiting to be processed.
Bandwidth: The amount of information a server can handle at a given time.
Tracking these is vital for assessing server health and identifying potential issues before they impact performance. For instance, if a server is reaching the limits of its bandwidth, if it’s using too much memory, or if the input/output speed drops significantly, any of those are signs that there are issues your IT team will need to investigate and resolve.
How Server Failures Occur and the Consequences of Insufficient Monitoring
Some may wonder: if they don’t monitor their servers, what’s the worst that can happen?
To answer that rhetorical question, we can start by looking at the different ways server failures can occur. These include:
Hardware failure, brought about by old or damaged equipment, lack of maintenance, or human error.
Software crashes, where the software your company uses encounters constant errors or fails to work.
Network issues, which can be caused by anything from bandwidth limitations to misconfigured network settings to security breaches.
Any of these can cause significant damage to an organization, such as unplanned and excessive downtime that sets back productivity, loss of valuable data, and security vulnerabilities that let hackers and other bad actors into your network. That, in turn, can lead to major reputational damage, including loss of revenue and customer trust.
Fortunately, proper server monitoring can detect and prevent these damages. Server monitoring tools can identify potential issues well in advance, so they can be addressed before anything crashes.
Essential Best Practices for Effective Server Monitoring
Now that we’ve established the importance of server monitoring and the consequences of failure, it helps to know the best practices. Essential best practices for server monitoring include:
Set up alerts: One of the biggest benefits of server monitoring is the ability to proactively address potential issues. Setting up alerts means your IT team will be the first to know when a new anomaly arises, so they can fix it before it causes any damage.
Regularly review your metrics: Your metrics are your first indicators whenever anything starts to go awry. Reviewing them regularly can help you spot any areas for improvement or maintenance, so you can keep your server up and running.
Conduct routine maintenance: Regular server maintenance is valuable for upkeep. This includes installing any software patches or updates to keep your entire system up-to-date and secure.
Automate monitoring: Server monitoring shouldn’t be a manual process. Automated tools make it easy to watch your servers 24/7, and when combined with automatic alerts, keep your IT team swift and responsive.
Effortless Server Monitoring and Remote Management with Splashtop AEM
When you’re looking for a solution to monitor and manage your servers from anywhere, Splashtop AEM (autonomous endpoint management) has you covered. Splashtop AEM enables you to monitor your servers from anywhere, so you can detect issues before they become a problem – this helps ensure maximum uptime, even for remote or hybrid work environments.
Additionally, should any issues arise, Splashtop enables remote access and management, so IT agents and admins can connect to server endpoints from anywhere. They can apply updates, reboot devices, and diagnose issues no matter where they are, with the same ease as if the endpoint were right in front of them.
Plus, Splashtop AEM makes it easy to automate tasks like patch management, software updates, and script execution. This ensures frequent and consistent endpoint management without needing IT agents to manually carry out these tasks.
With Splashtop AEM, you can:
Manage all your endpoints from a single console
Automate routine tasks
Send updates and patches out across multiple endpoints instantly
Receive proactive alerts and automated fixes
Customize and enforce policies across devices
Monitor your metrics and endpoint health from a single dashboard
Receive detailed reports on your hardware and software inventory
Receive real-time threat detection, automated response, and antivirus management
Want to experience Splashtop for yourself? You can get started today with a free trial:
