Finding the best fitting monitoring solution is not an easy exercise. The market is in a fast shift and a large number of solutions is out there. Find a huge list of monitoring solutions at “100 Top Server Monitoring & Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solutions”.
This list is a good starting point to review the different choices found in the market. All mentioned products have their strengths and weaknesses in different areas. Each solution – let us call it product – has its own focus areas:
- Network monitoring
- Time series processing
- Logging
- Application Performance
- System Monitoring
It is important to start with the expectations of the users and stakeholders:
- Requirement specifications
- System Monitoring
- Cloud Services Monitorng
- Usage Monitoring
- User Response Time
- Transaction Tracking
- User Stories & Playbooks
- Define usage scenarios
- User stories can help
- Play books help prioritize activities
- Review the existing solution(s)
- Gap analysis
- Efficiency
- Serviceability
- Support
- Knowledge base and familiarity
- Solution design
- Agile Development
- Iterate Frequently
- Collaborate with the different teams in your organization
Having a system management solution is not a status you reach, it is more like a tour. You can’t buy a solution, install it, implement it and be happy for ever. It is more like a travel with good equipment making things easier. But the things have to be done. This leads to the awareness, that your organization has to support that function.
System management is a daily business which has to support the organization’s needs and be agile enough to fulfill changing requirements in an elastic environment.
So what is the best solution now for you and your organization?
Well, it depends on the outcome of the workshops, where the above questions are discussed and answers are defined. In most cases, there is not a single product, it is the combination of two or more products using interfaces to build a very customer specific solution.
Find a discussion of the monitoring focus areas in more detail under the blog entry Monitoring Focus Areas.