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Benefits and Possible Drawbacks of Cloud-based Server Monitoring Systems
With more and more businesses looking to increase efficiencies through virtualization, server monitoring has acquired a critical role.
Appropriate deployment of the right server monitoring solution can deliver efficient resource allocation and optimum database and application performance, thereby increasing business productivity and enhancing competitive ability.
Companies implement virtualization in order to reduce the cost of investing in physical servers, to save time as well as to cut down on energy expenses and cooling costs. One stands to capitalize on virtualization only if one can maximize server uptime and allocate resources efficiently.Selecting the right solution and mode of deployment is critical to effective server monitoring. Of the wide range of server monitoring tools available today there’s no universally best solution that fits all user profiles. Given widely different environments and evolving user needs, finding the right fit can be somewhat challenging. IT managers need to review the range of options available and not only select the one best suited to their infrastructure and services, but also decide whether a cloud-based or on-premise solution would be most effective and reliable.
Selecting the right solution and mode of deployment is critical to effective server monitoring. Of the wide range of server monitoring tools available today there’s no universally best solution that fits all user profiles. Given widely different environments and evolving user needs, finding the right fit can be somewhat challenging. IT managers need to review the range of options available and not only select the one best suited to their infrastructure and services, but also decide whether a cloud-based or on-premise solution would be most effective and reliable.
Just as cloud-based monitoring services have some clear advantages over on-premise solutions, there are a few aspects that could turn out to be drawbacks depending on the user’s needs. IT procurement managers need to consider the benefits and shortcomings of monitoring as a service before deploying a cloud-based monitoring system.
Advantages
From the user’s perspective, a cloud-based monitoring service is simpler and faster to deploy and operate. Usually, the user signs in online to use a particular monitoring service and downloads the vendor’s agent, which collects performance data. Also, cloud-based monitoring frees the user from having to maintain hardware and storage systems required for a monitoring solution as maintenance is the vendor’s responsibility as is upgrading to a new version.
In the case of applications distributed across servers and multiple geographic locations, a SaaS solution makes monitoring easier because data collected by multiple agents installed on multiple servers is routed to a cloud backend. Some cloud monitoring services offer a detailed overview or an application flow chart of all interactions between application components together with performance metrics, showing the user which node or tier is malfunctioning. This functionality offers faster and much more efficient monitoring of multi-tiered applications.
Cloud-based monitoring makes it possible for the user to view his monitoring system from anywhere using any device that can connect to the vendor’s cloud-based dashboard.
Potential concerns
The most important point to consider here is data security because the user’s application performance data as well as business operations data are stored by the vendor. This means the user has little control if someone else tries to access his data. Therefore, the user needs to select a vendor that has robust security measures in place to protect his data.
How reliable a monitoring system is depends on how skilled the vendor is at maintaining stability and uptime of monitoring services. IT managers need to evaluate a vendor’s monitoring process as well as the expertise of employees who handle the process before selecting a monitoring service.
Also, though cloud-based monitoring services can be customized to some extent, on-premise solutions normally afford a higher degree of customizability.
Ultimately, the user needs to select a reliable, secure, cost-effective and stable monitoring solution that best supports his unique combination of database and application services.
