“Hello my fellow technology enthusiasts, I wanted to speak about a subject that is recognized in its true nature by all but seldom understood. The topic is “Cloud Computing” and will be addressed in series. So, let ‘s dive into the world of cloud computing. In this blog I am going to focus on cloud monitoring.
What is Cloud Monitoring?
How does cloud monitoring work?
Why use cloud monitoring?
Cloud monitoring types
Benefits of cloud monitoring
Cloud monitoring best practices
What is Cloud Monitoring?
The method of measuring the health of cloud-based IT infrastructures is cloud monitoring. Organizations should proactively monitor the availability, functionality, and security of their cloud systems using cloud management tools to identify and address vulnerabilities before they affect the end-user experience.
As part of an overall cloud management plan, cloud monitoring is generally carried out, allowing IT managers to check the operating status of cloud-based services. It also gives a comprehensive view of cloud metrics, log data, user flow, and more. A cloud server or a managed service provider may provide cloud monitoring. It is also available as Software as a Service (SaaS), so you can track the cloud infrastructure ‘s cost, stability and performance separately.
Click here for cloud based solutions for the businesses like Google, AWS and Azure
How does cloud monitoring work?
Ideally, like its on-premises and hybrid counterparts, cloud monitoring operates in real time. This helps increase visibility, including storage, networks, and applications, through the entire world. Cloud analytics tools’ primary features include tracking cloud-hosted resource use and traffic, unifying vast amounts of data across remote locations, detecting anomalies and their root causes, and forecasting possible threats or outages in development.
Why use cloud monitoring?
Cloud tracking lets you notice cloud irregularities, recognise disturbing trends, and identify potential issues so that when they get larger, you can repair tiny issues. Unauthorized alterations and website defacement can be recognised by cloud surveillance more easily than most IT workers can find on their own.
Cloud tracking lets you find the root cause of a problem promptly. Instead of continuously reviewing many different processes, an automated control panel allows the IT department to view the reports, warnings, metrics, and other tools in one place so that they can easily identify the source of a problem.
Cloud monitoring types
Database monitoring
More than half of the bottlenecks in application-performance arise in the database. You can track the requests, availability, use, and data integrity of the databases on which your cloud applications depend, using database performance management. These metrics illustrate the exact moment that a database goes down to speed up the resolution.
Cloud-server monitoring
Use this method, preferably in the sense of company transactions, to compare infrastructure efficiency with application performance. You will troubleshoot and diagnose the root cause of server performance problems quicker in live production environments with contextual visibility. Server management is often planned to bring little overhead into place.
Website monitoring
A website is a collection of files stored locally, and, in essence, transfers those files over a network to other computers. This tracking strategy monitors cloud-hosted sites’ operations, traffic, availability, and resource usage.
Virtual machine monitoring
This strategy is a digital emulation inside a digital; that is to say, infrastructure for virtualization and virtual machines. In IaaS, it is typically scaled out as a web server containing several virtual desktops. A monitoring programme can track each machine’s users, traffic, and status. With the additional bonus of cloud monitoring solutions, you get the advantages of conventional IT infrastructure monitoring.
Hybrid cloud and multi cloud monitoring
Businesses now use several on-site and cloud-based solutions. This mix of technology and its supporting operating processes will contribute to multi cloud and hybrid cloud systems involving an additional monitoring, maintenance, and control layer. Cloud monitoring helps to automate the operation of these dynamic applications while reducing the internal capital available for them to be handled.
Application performance management (APM)
Application Performance Management (APM) is an integral part of every solution for cloud control and plays a vital role in keeping the software operating smoothly and efficiently. APM tests the availability and efficiency of software, supplying development teams with the resources they need to address challenges in the context of an application easily. APM technologies help a company maximise customer service, satisfy SLAs, mitigate downtime, and reduce net running costs.
Click here for general IT Support services for Businesses
Benefits of cloud monitoring
- The reliability and protection of all consumer data should be the number one priority for a solution. You will concentrate on delivering excellent consumer services with that taken care of.
- The cloud may have various performance problems from badly designed APIs. You can prevent bad cloud API performance by using APIs that function rather than operations through artefacts. There will inevitably be fewer individual calls to the API and less traffic. APIs with little constraints on data type and logical architecture result in enhanced performance.
- Fewer device maintenance calls to the end users are expected with cloud monitoring, which decreases operating costs and overall IT capital. Furthermore, on the machines used to run the control services, cloud control has less difficult hardware requirements.
- Scaling for increased activity is seamless and works in organizations of any size.
- It is possible to control multiple positions from one common user interface. This ensures that staff can respond quicker in an alarm case. They can also handle different sites more effectively.
- In cloud wellbeing, automatic monitoring finds trends to anticipate vulnerabilities before they occur. Reporting is simpler and more data-driven, leading to better resolution. And you will prepare for the future easier by finding the root cause of these challenges. Click here for cyber security related issues of businesses
Cloud monitoring best practices
When your organization decides to make cloud monitoring a priority, your plan must include questions with quantifiable answers that accomplish your goals for implementation. As a general guideline, follow these best practices:
Monitor the end user experience
It should be the priority of any organisation to have a secure, smooth, and enjoyable user interface. End user interface monitoring gives you valuable information into customer loyalty that can contribute to improved sales directly.
You would want an advanced tracking framework to efficiently manage user experience and will embrace the reaction time data and feed it back as common, understandable data via the device. The IT department will set alarms and respond efficiently with uniform measurements, flow, and log data if a problem occurs.
Decide important metrics
There are many metrics you can calculate in a complicated cloud infrastructure. You need to assess your KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) and work on them to minimise noise and get useful insights. On any layer of your infrastructure, you can track and evaluate KPIs (like Service/system availability, MTTR (mean time to repair), MTBF (mean time between failures), Throughput, Response time, Latency, Security threats, Scalability, Cost per customer). Cloud analytics tools come with built-in metrics and allow you to build your own metrics with some of them.
Automate cloud monitoring
When tracking the cloud-based software, there are typical bugs you can bump into again and again. Therefore, as many cloud monitoring activities as possible should be automated. You do not have to waste time on repetitive activities this way, so you can remain focused on problems that involve human decision making.
For instance, when a main metric exceeds a pre-defined threshold, set up an automatic auto-scaling action. Or, automatically recognise and shut down idle services, which can save you a lot, especially if you are on a pricing schedule for pay-as-you-go. When an automatic operation takes place, you may even give yourself reminders and updates.
Monitor security
In the cloud, confidentiality is key, so having tight control of information at all endpoints helps to minimise risks. Until it exits the network, solutions that search, interpret, and act on data help guard against data loss. To prevent ransomware and data breaches, it is also necessary to search, review, and identify data before it is downloaded to the network. Click her to know more about cloud security.
Conclusion
Cloud monitoring refers to the method of managing and improving the cloud resources of organisations. Organizations conducting cloud monitoring aim to ensure that applications have standardized levels of access and desired performance, using multiple metrics and methodologies. The cloud still must be monitored, equivalent to other technologies, to be used properly and produce planned performance.
