Data center monitoring

Data centers are at the heart of operation for any enterprise that utilises an IT infrastructure. They essentially host business applications and storage space for the entire business network. Data centers might be anything from just a single rack with a couple of servers, to those spanning across cities or even countries.

Real time datacenter monitoring becomes paramount when organisations want to ensure low downtime and improve overall performance of your data center. However, there are several vital aspects to be monitored, which becomes virtually impossible as the size of the data center increases.Hence, a proper datacenter monitoring tool has to be deployed.

To ensure the best performance from your data center, it is crucial to implement data center performance monitoring based on three important parameters - network connectivity, server performance and storage performance. The main setback admins face while executing this, is the lack of an integrated data center monitoring solution that provides you visibility over all these three aspects.

ManageEngine OpManager helps you manage and monitor all the different aspects of your data center's performance, all from an unified console. By monitoring critical performance metrics of your data center in real time, OpManager functions as a complete data center monitoring system and enables you to maintain your data center resources at its peak performance levels.

Monitoring switches and routers for connectivity in your data center

To begin with, data center monitoring solutions help monitor all network paths to and from the data center and ensures that all devices related to network connectivity are performing well. This primarily includes network switches and routers, followed by security devices like firewalls. 

OpManager monitors the health and performance of your switches and routers in real time, and alerts you if something goes wrong with your devices. Along with the regular alerts displayed in the web client, you can also configure OpManager's data center management software to intimate you over other media like texts or emails, making it more than just a regular data center monitoring tool. This is to ensure you don't miss out on these alerts, and you're aware of the status of your devices at all times.

Monitor critical server metrics in your data center

On discovering your data center's network resources, OpManager's data center monitor automatically associates performance monitors based on your device type and starts monitoring them. You can monitor both physical and virtual servers in your data center, using SNMP/WMI/CLI protocols to fetch performance data from your devices.

You can even use multiple credential profiles to monitor your virtual servers intensively. For example, VMware API can only fetch a certain amount of performance data from your VM. Now, if the VM hosted is a Linux server, you can apply the suitable CLI credential over the VMware credentials to fetch additional metrics that are otherwise not accessible using just VMware API. You can apply suitable credential profiles whenever it is required; either during discovery itself, or even after discovery.

Other than the default monitors in OpManager, you can also set up custom monitors for your devices either using SNMP or WMI to monitor device metrics of your choice.

Real-time threshold based monitoring

OpManager's data center monitor allows you to set thresholds for your performance monitors, enabling you to easily detect variations in performance of your data center devices. There are three levels of alerts - Attention, Trouble and Critical, to convey the criticality of the issue in the alert itself. The alerts are raised in the product's web client, where you can see all details on the issue and immediately take measures to resolve it.

Monitor hardware metrics in your data center

One aspect data center admins find it difficult is monitoring hardware metrics along with other performance data. This becomes especially tough when separate tools have to be used for monitoring the hardware.

With OpManager's datacenter monitoring system, you can also monitor hardware metrics of your devices from inside the web client itself. The Hardware tab in your Device Snapshot page lists all the hardware metrics from that device and their status. Alarms related to hardware are also displayed in the same page, making it easy for you to know everything about your device's hardware in a glance while monitoring data center.

Dashboards - an all-in-one data center monitoring tool

OpManager's data center monitoring capabilities lets you create dedicated dashboards to view all the information you need about your network in a single pane. You can use existing/default dashboards available as a base and improve the details in it, or you can create a new dashboard from scratch with all the widgets that you would need to know about your data center's health and performance. Monitor data center effectively with OpManager, which also has a dedicated "Real time dashboard" that helps you view the performance stats of your network devices in real time.

Also, when it comes to data center monitoring, it must be made sure that the admin is always updated with the latest performance data of the network, so that any performance issues detected can be instantly resolved. OpManager's CCTV views help you achieve it, by allowing you to create NOC views that refresh at a user-defined interval. That way, it is ensured that the performance data you're being displayed is up-to-the-minute.

Visualize your data center infrastructure using Racks and 3D views

When there is a large amount of data to be constantly monitored, there is an increased chance of data to be misinterpreted or missed due to human error, which could translate to disaster in data center monitoring services. Visualizing the available network infrastructure is a great way to know the overall status of the resources in a glance.

With OpManager's set of data center monitoring tools, you can create 3D views of your data center to easily understand your network infrastructure. You can begin with creating Rack views to create a virtual representation of the arrangement of servers in individual racks, followed by placing those racks on the floor in the 3D floor view. The status of each server on the rack is displayed right next to it using OpManager's default color codes, making it a breeze to see the status of your servers and racks. This feature makes it possible to get a visual idea of the status of your data center, instead of just displaying numbers and stats like any other data center monitoring software.

Detailed Reports to understand overall data center performance

OpManager's Reports help you to understand the bigger picture about the performance of your data center. You can view historical data on the performance of your data center's devices under four wide categories - Performance, Availability, Response Time & Packet Loss, and Inventory. Devices based on Groups or Business Views can be selected, and you can even schedule the reports to be sent to recipients of your choice, at a particular interval.

Monitor other critical devices in your data center

With OpManager's add-ons, you can make sure that you're extensively monitoring all aspects of your data center, network-wise. OpManager has exclusive add-ons for firewall log management, network flow analysis, applications management and monitoring, network configuration management and monitoring, and so on. That way, you can also monitor secondary devices such as firewalls, security devices or switches, thereby ensuring the overall health and performance of your data center.