Ensuring system availability and performance: How Site24x7 helps SysAdmins

System and server inventory

As a SysAdmin, with every GA release of a new OS version, you'll typically spend hours determining the number of servers that are incompatible with the upgrade. If a vendor stops patches for a particular model of workstation, you need the latest data auto-updated to know the list of workstations at risk.

For those who take up the responsibility of a network administrator as well, having a robust network configuration manager that acts as an auto-updated network configuration repository with multi-vendor support is crucial. With Site24x7's server and system inventory view, network configuration manager (NCM), and reporting capabilities, managing an OS update takes just minutes.

Availability of servers and network devices

Availability is the bare minimum that is expected from servers and network devices. When a server, VM, cloud instance, or a micro-service goes offline (i.e., the availability is compromised), you should hear about it from your monitoring tool and not from an affected customer. Similarly, an unavailable network device can also jeopardize the availability of all the connected devices. A rodent-chewed cable, a misconfigured network switch, or an over-sensitive network firewall is all it takes to render an entire data center useless.

To ensure your organization's servers and network interfaces are available 24/7, you must bring them under the eyes of an enterprise-grade, lightweight, and robust server monitoring agent and network monitoring suite. You'll get real-time alerts at the very first sign of trouble.

Fix problems before they happen

You can ensure the availability of your servers and network devices proactively rather than reactively. With Site24x7, enable IT automation actions that can restart, run commands, and execute scripts when your servers are offline. While these auto-remediation actions perform the quick fix, you can focus on finding the root cause. Our monitoring engine provides a capacity plan that provides an intelligent forecast of resource usage. Our AI-integrated capacity planning engine coupled with our alarms suite solves your present and future problems.

Applications management

Enterprises rely on multiple applications and databases to run smoothly. There are different applications that run specific tasks in an organization:

• Microsoft Active Directory: User management
• Microsoft IIS: Runs sites, domains, and applications
• Microsoft Exchange: Acts as a mail server
• MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle databases: For storing and accessing data on-demand

Any availability issue in these applications is significantly harder to detect than issues at the server level. SysAdmins across enterprises trust Site24x7 to pinpoint issues at the application level as well. If a domain is down, your mailbox will contain the reason the domain is down, and your team need not sift through logs and patterns to find the reason.

Ensuring optimal system performance

Availability and system performance are equal (but distinct) parameters in system administration. To ensure the servers, VM, network devices, and even workstations perform at desired capacities, routing maintenance activities like patches, updates, backups, and troubleshooting is necessary. You'll need the performance data of thousands of devices ready at any given time to avoid unwanted surprises. A NOC view is vital to know whether devices are at peak performance or not.

In addition to keeping an eye on all the systems, you must have an automated setup to alert you when critical patches are not applied, updates are not done, and backups are not stored. Activities like these are the first step in an airtight disaster recovery plan.

Another efficient way to keep an eye on problematic events in an IT infrastructure is having a robust log management and monitoring system. For instance, any OS-level event that requires attention can be detected via EventLogs in Windows and SysLogs in Linux-based systems. If there are any critical applications, their activities can be monitored via their logs. In organizations where a centralized log management platform is allowed, AppLogs helps you flag problematic log entries. For those who prefer to be alerted when critical log entries occur in EventLogs and SysLogs without ingesting their logs to a log management system, a resource check profile does the trick.

System security: The cornerstone of IT infrastructure

A SysAdmin's first priority is ensuring the digital security of their systems and networks. The number of endpoints in an IT infrastructure is equal to the number of entry points for attacks. While there are dedicated security teams with SREs, SysAdmins are an organization's first line of defense against cyberattacks.

While Site24x7 recommends SysAdmins and CTOs to have a standalone endpoint security tool, our server monitoring tool complements their efforts in keeping their IT infrastructure secure. Learn how SysAdmins across enterprises, SMBs, and startups keep their IT infrastructure secure with Site24x7 in this comprehensive page and also with our dedicated firmware vulnerability report. Site24x7's IT infrastructure observability platform steps up to all your IT security challenges and helps you solve them without breaking a sweat.

Site24x7 handles every challenge of SysAdmins

SysAdmins face a myriad of trials in their day-to-day IT routine, and enterprises worldwide have strengthened their hands with Site24x7. Here are some of the main reasons why organizations prefer Site24x7 to ensure system availability:

• 24/7 server inventory: Want to know data like which servers are running with EOL OS versions, low RAM capacity, make and model of the workstation, IP addresses, and so much more? Our inventory report does all this in one click.
• A report for every performance metric: Processes that take up the most memory, servers that are running low on disk capacity, servers that restarted recently, bandwidth usage of servers—these are few of the reports that are delivered straight to your inbox. With the ability to get reports for every use case on-demand and on schedule, your IT infrastructure is safe.
• Availability (NOC) view, overview, and drilled-down view: Get these all in one place. Whether it's thousands of servers and network devices, hundreds of cloud resources, or millions of containers, you can view the availability and problematic resources in one browser tab.
• Remediation in an instant: Want to run a script every time a disk fills up? Need to execute a command at the very instant a service takes up too much CPU utilization? Site24x7 has a suite of IT remediation actions in-built to help you fix IT infrastructure problems instantly.
• Works everywhere and works with everything: Site24x7 is vendor agnostic. Our server monitoring agent can be deployed on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, AIX, Solaris, or every major Linux distribution host. Site24x7 can create tickets in your preferred ticketing platform and also close them when the problem is rectified. Site24x7 offers preconfigured integration capabilities with most CMDB and ITSM tools.