Manage

Real Time Performance Monitoring and Management

• Strike a balance between these 5 critical help desk KPIs

  IT operations teams shouldn't view help desk KPIs in isolation, but rather as a set of closely related metrics that work together to track the user experience and costs. Continue Reading

• Lessons learned: Strategies to adjust IT operations in a crisis

  Curious how other businesses adjusted their IT operations strategies in light of COVID-19? Look back at these five recent SearchITOperations news stories to find out. Continue Reading

• Improve container monitoring with these strategies and tools

  Containerized infrastructure significantly expands the number of available metrics within an IT environment. Take a layered approach to container monitoring and lean heavily on automation. Continue Reading

• Balance the power and challenges of IT monitoring

  Advanced monitoring tools show IT admins exactly what's going on with apps and infrastructure. So, how do you apply those capabilities to solve and prevent real problems? Continue Reading

• Container logging tips for IT troubleshooting and more

  Don't just leave container log data on a host and forget about it. Instead, establish a detailed strategy to index, search, correlate and analyze that data. Continue Reading

• 3 ways to react to an IT system failure avalanche

  In complex IT infrastructures, a system or resource failure can spur follow-up issues. Compare three approaches to prevent these dreaded domino effects and reach the root of the problem.Continue Reading

• Gain deeper IT insight with machine learning for log analysis

  As the log analysis tool market evolves, machine learning plays an increasing role in helping IT teams discover significant anomalies and outliers in their data.Continue Reading

• 12 DevOps KPIs you should track to gauge improvement

  What's missing from your DevOps workflow? Cold, hard, impartial numbers. Track these key metrics to ensure DevOps processes achieve stated goals.Continue Reading

• configuration management (CM)

  Configuration management (CM) is a governance and systems engineering process for ensuring consistency in an operational environment.Continue Reading

• What IT admins need to know about cloud application patching

  When they host apps in a SaaS or PaaS environment, IT teams offload some patching duties to cloud providers. But other responsibilities become even more important.Continue Reading

• Assess AIOps benefits and challenges for enterprise IT teams

  To successfully reap the benefits of an AIOps implementation, IT teams first have to navigate some crucial cultural and technical shifts.Continue Reading

• Reality strikes when enterprises deploy Kubernetes in production

  It's easy to run containers with Kubernetes, but Kubernetes in production -- with enterprise security, monitoring and compliance demands -- is a different story.Continue Reading

• Get familiar with these SLA maintenance tips

  The basics of SLA management come at the intersection of business goals and the reality of possibility. IT teams must learn how to strike a balance between specific and conditional promises.Continue Reading

• Add Elasticsearch nodes to a cluster in simple steps

  Elasticsearch, part of the Elastic Stack with Logstash and Kibana, uses YAML for configuration scripting. Follow these steps to configure an Elasticsearch cluster with two nodes.Continue Reading

• How to improve help desk support via knowledge management

  Your organization's help desk support system could be more efficient. Find out how knowledge management and natural language processing solve hidden IT woes.Continue Reading

• Bookmark 10 popular tips on containers and Kubernetes

  Should we go with an open source or commercial option? What about DevOps? These 10 essential tips explain how containers fit into complex modern IT environments.Continue Reading

• Use Active Directory for testing environments in DevOps shops

  AD enables admins to create testing environments almost identical to production environments through duplicated trees, interconnected forests and authentication best practices.Continue Reading

• Cloud and containers rewrite monitoring and management rulebooks

  IT performance management is tricky when it stretches as big as the public cloud and scrunches as small as a microservice. IT ops techniques must change to keep up.Continue Reading

• Anomaly detection methods unleash microservices performance

  When distributed applications run in containers, admins suddenly have a whirlwind of metrics to track instead of just a short list. These methods reach into the heart of the task.Continue Reading

• IT incident management

  IT incident management is an area of IT service management (ITSM) wherein the IT team returns a service to normal as quickly as possible after a disruption, in a way that aims to create as little negative impact on the business as possible.Continue Reading

• Application performance metrics and tools fit for modern architectures

  Distributed applications and cloud hosting have led to new application interactions and KPI categories -- and different performance concerns need different metrics.Continue Reading

• Find the ideal incident management automation tool or tools

  Unless the data center floods or a digger cuts a network cable, incident management takes place via software tools. The quality of these tools determines how quickly work can resume.Continue Reading

• Three log analytics use cases set better ops in motion

  The path to more resilient, bug-free and available IT deployments is hiding in plain sight, in log data. Parse short- and long-term data these three ways to improve operations.Continue Reading

• How the Nagios monitoring tool tracks IT environment details

  Nagios users can monitor diverse components of an IT infrastructure, across Linux and Windows OSes, networks and servers, so long as they roll up their sleeves and dig into agents and plug-ins.Continue Reading

• Use load tests to balance IT capacity management and QoE

  Simply throwing more resources at an application won't solve scaling issues. IT ops pros must take the time to chart the relationship between IT capacity and software performance.Continue Reading

• Data center operations best practices checklist

  Independent experts guide you to better data center operations with tips and advice on best practices and the right management tools.Continue Reading

• Monitoring thresholds determine IT performance alerts

  An IT monitoring strategy depends on the applications and systems it governs. Static and dynamic thresholds each have benefits and drawbacks, but it's possible to find a balance.Continue Reading

• Use an IT incident management system to enable automation

  IT admins and gurus can't tackle every issue every hour of the day -- let alone predict them first. A dynamic combination of monitoring and incident management makes for better admins.Continue Reading

• Ensure container monitoring and control via smart tooling

  Don't try to stick with traditional monitoring tools when your organization matures to containers; they won't do enough. Seek out monitoring and management tools with targeted capabilities.Continue Reading

• Unleash application dependency mapping tools to combat outages

  Create a detailed map of application dependencies from the CMDB and cloud resources and help prevent unexpected outages.Continue Reading

• Reap IT automation benefits in every layer of the stack

  Automation technologies create an artificial brain for IT operations, but that won't turn skilled admins and engineers into zombies -- far from it.Continue Reading

• IT process improvements lurk in every onerous incident

  When an IT incident arises, the focus is often on what admins can fix in the moment, but unflappable organizations make process improvement the final step of issue resolution.Continue Reading

• DevOps support strategies for an effective, informed help desk

  In a DevOps shop, the help desk is just as important as every other group. Give them the resources they need to keep users up and running -- before you're out of a job.Continue Reading

• Cherry-pick from ITSM frameworks to achieve change control

  Don't let the horrors of ITSM implementations gone wrong turn your IT organization away from quality control and improvement. Discerning ITSM adopters know that the more frameworks there are, the merrier.Continue Reading

• Monitor IT infrastructure with an eye on customer experience

  It doesn't matter how many IT monitoring tools oversee your infrastructure; they're all looking in the wrong direction.Continue Reading

• Scale up DevOps processes against the odds

  DevOps is the change everyone wants, until it means new processes. The difficult but rewarding shift to a DevOps process flow reimagines everything from releases to incident response.Continue Reading

• Let's talk about IT infrastructure and emerging technologies

  Work closely with hardware specialists and engineers in the data center, as emerging compute, network and storage technologies have ramifications beyond the racks.Continue Reading

• What admins need to know to master containerization technology

  Running applications in containers makes sense when it comes to resource usage, but how will your operations team handle the related management tasks?Continue Reading

• A fresh approach is needed to manage containers properly

  IT operations teams can learn to manage containerized applications, but the approach and the tools are different from traditional app management practices.Continue Reading

• Internet of things data security proves vital in digitized world

  Securing IoT data should become a priority as more companies manipulate the volumes produced by these devices. Seemingly innocuous information could allow privacy invasions.Continue Reading

• Don't let serverless applications dodge performance monitoring

  Serverless applications abstract the app from the underlying infrastructure. And that changes the IT team's approach to application performance monitoring.Continue Reading

• How IT management tools change a data center for the better

  Organizations that choose to adopt IT management tools can gain the upper hand on reporting, troubleshooting, provisioning and other important data center functions.Continue Reading

• Simplify your platform with IT systems management tools

  So much effort goes into simply keeping an IT infrastructure up and running. Imagine what more could be accomplished once you automate some of those tasks with IT systems management tools.Continue Reading

• These IT automation scripts take little effort and save a lot of work

  Doing IT by hand is doing it wrong. Whether to provision components, research an issue or report on performance, IT automation scripts are powerful and easy to write.Continue Reading

• IT systems management

  Systems management is the administration of the information technology systems in an enterprise data center. An effective systems management plan facilitates the delivery of IT as a service (ITaaS) and allows the organization's employees to respond ...Continue Reading

• Manage disk image files wisely in the face of DevOps sprawl

  There are strategies to prevent obsolete disk images from clogging up valuable space, especially in a rapid-change DevOps shop. However, not all VMs will benefit from the same plan.Continue Reading

• Know how to handle IT incident management to avoid chaos

  When an important application goes down, you'd better have the right IT incident management processes and procedures in place to fix it.Continue Reading

• Patch servers the right way without wasting time

  Apply these server patching best practices to save time, reduce complexity, and build an optimal schedule and toolkit.Continue Reading

• How do I size capacity for VMware oversubscription?

  What best practices and tools can I use to allocate the right resources in an oversubscribed virtualization deployment?Continue Reading

• Master microservices management on IT resources

  Deploying and managing microservices is a hard, continuous process. Proper resource planning and automation tools help realize the benefits of cloud and virtualization.Continue Reading

• Cloud load-balancing difficulties bog down hybrid-deployed apps

  Cloud load balancing frees application server instances and provide enterprise IT with better overall performance, but current conditions make it hard in a hybrid IT environment.Continue Reading

• Delving into neural networks and deep learning

  Deep learning and neural networks will play a big role in the future of everything from data center management to application development. But are these two technologies actually new?Continue Reading

• Big data revives IT operations analytics

  Big data is a fitting match for IT operations management, where the endless logs and events finally add up to more efficiency and less troubleshooting.Continue Reading

• Application maintenance keeps legacy systems serviceable

  IT operations needs tools to ensure that it can manage old -- maybe ancient -- applications while deploying new apps with different structures.Continue Reading

• Showback reduces costs and exposes resource hogs on your IT platform

  IT showback reduces costs better than a chargeback system by allowing companies to compare and optimize resource usage across their business units.Continue Reading

• Data center asset management yields big ticket savings

  Data center operators can use tools already in place to create IT asset management strategies that yield millions in savings.Continue Reading

• Ensure a successful IT infrastructure monitoring tools integration

  Data center tool integration projects don't end when you finish linking up systems. Without testing and regular maintenance, integrations quickly fall apart.Continue Reading

• Log analysis tools join data center management arsenal

  The humble log file, produced by nearly everything in your data center, holds the key to complex troubleshooting, convincing capacity plans and revved up performance.Continue Reading

• Know your data center monitoring system

  You can't depend on a building system to run the data center. Implement a BMS and a DCIM tool to monitor and predict system changes, tighten security and more.Continue Reading

• Choosing server management tools to fit your data center

  Homogeneous system management tools provide excruciating detail on servers, but in some circumstances, heterogeneous tools are a better choice.Continue Reading

• Scale up vs. scale out: Debate evolves over how to upgrade data centers

  Pick sides on whether to scale up vs. scale out servers. It will establish what method to enhance server performance makes sense for your data center.Continue Reading

• Five tips for selecting system management tools

  Too much granularity? Not enough? Need alerts? Maybe not. There are five considerations for systems management tools -- and cost isn't one of them.Continue Reading

• Tips and tricks to improve memory paging on servers

  Memory paging helps virtual machines share a server's memory resources nicely, but can throttle performance. A few simple tricks will optimize paging.Continue Reading

• How and when to enable hardware-based TPM security on servers

  Most servers include a Trusted Platform Module, but you only want to turn it on and manage TPM when the server handles high-value encrypted workloads.Continue Reading

• How to overcome the limitations of remote server management

  Remote server management tools enable granular server control from anywhere, but they're useless without a network connection or power supply.Continue Reading

• How KVM over IP makes remote systems management easier

  Remote systems management using KVM over IP is helping businesses avoid the costs associated with travel while improving support response times.Continue Reading

• Tips for improving server reliability and available memory

  New memory modules and system capabilities can increase available memory and reliability on mission-critical servers.Continue Reading

• Managing and monitoring server log data

  See how proactive system administrators help themselves avoid a security breach by putting an effective log management policy in place.Continue Reading

• Best practices for remote server management

  Remote server management will continue to be an important part of data centers, but administrators should also take steps to ensure someone onsite will be able to perform tasks as well.Continue Reading

• Syslog-ng configuration: Building a log aggregation server

  In this tip, learn how to create a log aggregation server with a syslog-ng configuration, which can organize and simplify interactions with your systems' log messages.Continue Reading

• Using OpenNMS and SNMP for open source systems management

  Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) can allow a deeper look into system information gathered from OpenNMS. This tip walks through network monitoring with OpenNMS and SNMP.Continue Reading

• Using benchmarks for virtualization capacity planning

  Benchmarking tools for virtualization capacity planning allow administrators to find more efficiency and forecast growth in computing resources.Continue Reading

• Improve benchmark performance with simple optimizations

  While benchmarking is great for measuring system performance, benchmarking tools themselves are applications capable of overtaxing the CPU. However, simple optimizations can ensure benchmark performance by preventing these tools from overwhelming ...Continue Reading

• Selecting benchmarking tools for specific needs

  Narrowing down the best benchmarking tool requires testing and a careful evaluation of needs, including system compatibility, level of technical depth and scalability.Continue Reading

• Choosing a server management tool: Hardware vendor or third party?

  The decision of whether to opt for a server management tool from your hardware vendor or a third-party software vendor depends on criteria such as data center budget, the tool's reliability and ease of maintenance.Continue Reading

• Remote server administration tools: Manage your data center from a distance

  New systems management options are making it easier for administrators to manage servers via smartphones and laptops.Continue Reading

• Using HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) 5.2 for systems management and monitoring

  Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co.'s Systems Insight Manager (SIM) 5.2 offers systems management and monitoring for HP servers or WMI-, SNMP- or WBEM-enabled systems. SIM works with HP's Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) management modules to detect hardware ...Continue Reading

• Is effective performance management in the data center possible?

  Data centers are increasingly important to the delivery of business services, and performance management is more crucial than ever. IT's challenge is conducting performance management activities effectively and at low-cost. Key to maintaining ...Continue Reading

• Lights out management: How to administer servers from the Bahamas

  While there are many solutions out there to aid an administrator in remote management, I've found the lights out management (LOM) built into many modern servers is superior to many of the alternatives.Continue Reading

• A general list of data center cost components

  Data center strategy specialist Charles King offers one reader a list of questions and considerations for setting up and running a data center.Continue Reading

• Systems management checklist: Software upgrades

  Software upgrades are an inevitable part of using technology, and it is likely that even the smallest upgrade will alter your system in some way. Although these changes are simply the price, for example, of security patches or better compatibility, ...Continue Reading