See the need. Meet the need. Not a bad philosophy, and one that can often work very well in many areas. Unfortunately, network monitoring isn’t one of them.
In a previous post we talked about the reasons that midsized businesses can’t ignore the need for network monitoring. In this post we will look at the need to be deliberate when planning a monitoring architecture, because it can grow unwieldy if you aren’t.
Building an Efficient Monitoring Architecture
There is always a way to connect something to the network. It may not be done elegantly, but it can be done. Tell us if this sounds familiar:
Someone returns from an industry conference with a new IT tool, or shows up one day with the latest analysis device that must be plugged into the network immediately. Can it be done? Sure. But the problem with this ad hoc style of adding tools and devices is that it creates sprawl, largely because traditional switching equipment introduces a constraint. Typically, the number of SPAN ports a switch can configure is severely limited, often making it difficult to get additional data.
The other problem is these switches prioritize live traffic. If the switch becomes overloaded, either a small percentage of the packets are sent to the SPAN port or traffic stops flowing to the ports altogether. Without the tools seeing all the data, you don’t have full visibility, and that should be the goal of any monitoring architecture.
Knowing What Needs to be Monitored is the First Step
Network monitoring allows managers to “listen in” on all network traffic between switches, routers and other devices on the network landscape. Intelligent network monitoring can observe, conduct IT traffic analysis, filter and direct the right packets to the right performance and security monitoring tools to provide 100-percent visibility and increased analysis, accuracy and results. An ad hoc approach can’t do that. That’s why being very deliberate about what you’re monitoring and how you’re doing it is so important.
Building the right monitoring architecture starts by knowing the answers to the questions on this checklist:
Network Monitoring Checklist
□ Identify the network links that need monitoring
□ Identify the types of monitoring (performance, application, security)
□ Select a data monitoring switch that will condition data to the traffic probes
□ Select a data monitoring switch that will increase efficiency of the traffic probes
□ Determine if an all-in-one data monitoring switch and probes solution is the best fit
Choosing the Right Monitoring Switch
You’ll notice that the first two questions are about the kind of monitoring you need and then how to set up the monitoring points. The rest of the questions, three of the five, are about which type of monitoring switch will suit you best. That’s because the right switch is the key to building an efficient monitoring architecture.
The right switch limits the overall cost of monitoring and securing your network. Even large enterprises cannot afford to implement one tool for every monitoring point in the data center. That’s cost-prohibitive. But at least in the enterprise data center there is likely someone whose only job is to monitor the network for performance or intrusions. At the midsized company, that sort of monitoring is just one part of one person’s job.
The midsized business’ IT team has a lot to manage, especially with the expected growth of end points on the network, moves to voice and video over the network, supporting new applications and services, and everyday provisioning. Then there are the added challenges of mobile employees and those wanting to bring their own device. Some organizations are moving applications to the cloud and enlightened business executives are looking for analytics.
From an outsider’s perspective that’s exciting. Faster networks that can provide real-time data are the key to cutting-edge analytics that can give the midsize businesses the insights needed to compete with larger enterprises. But the reality inside data centers is that all the engineers are spread thin. The IT team can’t be everywhere. IT needs to find some way of automating network monitoring while spending more time with the business partners to address their service needs.
An aggregation switch, like APCON’s IntellaStore II, brings together multiple points in the network, merging them into manageable data streams and sending those streams to the correct tool for analysis.
It eliminates the need for those employees to run from point to point in the data center trying to hunt for the cause of the network problem, losing hours that they could and should be spending on other responsibilities. That’s what they are doing now with an ad hoc monitoring architecture. Those jobs that you need them to be doing aren’t getting done. But being deliberate about building out an architecture that provides the visibility needed now, and can also scale to meet the needs of the future, is key for midsized companies to not only get the most out of their monitoring tools but also their employees.
Read our latest Monitoring for Midsize Businesses eBook before you begin planning your monitoring architecture.
The post Making the Case for Monitoring the Midsized Network: Be Deliberate appeared first on APCON, Inc..
