Setting up network monitoring

Newsletter April 2020

Monitoring your IT network is essential, but how do you avoid getting bogged down in too many incidents, unclear reports and getting out of bed for something trivial. This requires a plan of action before you start setting up your monitoring tool.

Make an inventory

First of all, investigate and research your complete inventory and document it. Provide a clear schedule of the hardware, software and the tasks they perform. Also give logical names to all components, so that you will not receive a message such as: “Ping 5 on server win-hrsjre does not work” 

 Then look at your business processes, what is necessary to monitor and which parts are essential for the company. You can also group them by function, location or type for a better overview. Also pay attention to what is not essential, make sure you do not monitor everything. With too many reports, you can’t see the wood for the trees. If a warning goes off, you can still zoom in.

Balancing 

Arrange your monitoring solution with the foregoing in mind, ensure that if critical processes fail, you will be notified immediately. By running it for at least a week, you get a baseline. You now have a better understanding of what is normal and at which value you desire a notification. Start also with the finetuning off who receives a notification when, who is responsible for which systems and who wants to be informed.

Reports 

Finally, provide reports so that you will be able to anticipate on trends and problems. Schedule regularly to view the reports and draw conclusions from this, take measures and preventive actions.

If you have any questions about this, do not hesitate to email / call our helpdesk. We are happy to help you with our view on monitoring and setting up a solid system.

The team of TSMS