Updated: July 11, 2020 (June 7, 2004)

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The Need for Monitoring

My Atlas / Sidebar

1,202 wordsTime to read: 7 min

Nearly all large and mid-size organizations use Unix, Linux, and Windows servers to perform mission-critical functions, meaning outages that could impose significant and immediate financial loss, as well as eventual loss of customer confidence and market share. IT departments need to measure how they are meeting service-level commitments, proactively ward off outages, and respond instantly to problems, preferably before users are even aware they exist.

Complex Solutions to a Complex Problem

Making distributed systems highly available is difficult because of their complexity and interdependencies. For example, a failed domain name system (DNS) server could potentially cripple many other servers and the applications they host. (For more information on high availability, see “‘Five Nines’-Is It Even Possible?” on page 3 of the June 2001 Update.)

To monitor these complex systems effectively, organizations have turned to Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), as well as to comprehensive system-monitoring products available from companies such as BMC (Patrol), Computer Associates (Unicenter), Heroix (Robomon), Hewlett-Packard (OpenView), IBM (Tivoli TME), and NetIQ (AppManager). All provide intelligent software agents that run on each server they monitor and that initiate local actions and forward information, events, and alerts to central gathering systems and consoles. Most of these products can monitor Windows, Unix, and Linux servers, and some can even monitor mainframes and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-enabled network devices.

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Updated: July 10, 2020 (August 9, 2004)

  Sidebar

The Need for Monitoring

My Atlas / Sidebar

1,203 wordsTime to read: 7 min

Nearly all large and mid-size organizations use Unix, Linux, and Windows servers to perform mission-critical functions, meaning outages that could impose significant and immediate financial loss, as well as eventual loss of customer confidence and market share. IT departments need to measure how they are meeting service-level commitments, proactively ward off outages, and respond instantly to problems, preferably before users are even aware they exist.

Complex Solutions to a Complex Problem

Making distributed systems highly available is difficult because of their complexity and interdependencies. For example, a failed domain name system (DNS) server could potentially cripple many other servers and the applications they host. (For more information on high availability, see “‘Five Nines’-Is It Even Possible?” on page 3 of the June 2001 Update.)

To monitor these complex systems effectively, organizations have turned to Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), as well as to comprehensive system-monitoring products available from companies such as BMC (Patrol), Computer Associates (Unicenter), Heroix (Robomon), Hewlett-Packard (OpenView), IBM (Tivoli TME), and NetIQ (AppManager). All provide intelligent software agents that run on each server they monitor and that initiate local actions and forward information, events, and alerts to central gathering systems and consoles. Most of these products can monitor Windows, Unix, and Linux servers, and some can even monitor mainframes and network devices using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

Atlas Members have full access

Get access to this and thousands of other unbiased analyses, roadmaps, decision kits, infographics, reference guides, and more, all included with membership. Comprehensive access to the most in-depth and unbiased expertise for Microsoft enterprise decision-making is waiting.

Membership Options

Already have an account? Login Now