Network monitoring solutions are well known by most It engineers, but some in house techies or IT managers many not be ware of a service that will help you improve your network stability and increase productivity. We have been using a Network monitoring system in our office for 6 months now and I can tell you that from my experiences so far, it's been a god send.

So what does it do?

Well, a network monitoring system doe exactly what it says on the tin, it keeps a close eye over your IT network and informs you of any problems that may arise,which can mean anything from your internet dropping to the RAID failing on your server.

It's all about communication, in Lehman's terms, the network monitoring tool sends messages to all aspects of your network and when there is no response, it will sound an alarm.

So what is monitored?

A lot of network monitoring tools can be configured to monitor the parts of your network you wish to keep an eye on, but on the hole the following should be standard.

Security;

The following security related issues should be monitored on a daily basis.

• Anti-virus software.
• Server backups, online and local.
• Critical network updates.
• Hacking.
• Hardware firewall performance.

Hardware monitoring.

All business critical hardware should be monitored, i.e. your servers. Server RAID stability should be checked along with CPU, RAM and hard disk stability.

Network performance monitoring.

Again this monitoring mainly evolves round the server. Hard disk space will be monitored along with user/system folder and file size, windows services, your internet stability and general performance of your server including the health of your hardware plus other aspects such as memory usage and exchange server store size.

The monitoring system we use also keeps us informed of any problems we may have with software applications on the server, for example if an application becomes inaccessible then we will be alerted to the fact.

How does the system keep us informed if there are any problems?

The system we use has a dashboard which is accessible from the internet. We also get alerts emailed directly to our inbox and you can also configure the system to text alerts to your phone.

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