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10 Best Practices To Get the Most Out of Your IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

IT infrastructures are in a constant state of change. From centralized mainframe systems to distributed serverless multi-cloud environments, these changes have happened relatively quickly. And nothing is stopping it.

Gartner predicts that by 2023, over 90% of IT organizations will have most of their staff working remotely. This is largely due to companies shifting to using more cloud services.

IT operations teams have had to find ways to keep up by implementing effective IT infrastructure monitoring. And with some having to do more with fewer resources, it’s important to make the most of monitoring by having the right tools and best practices in place.

Read on to learn about some best practices you can put in place, along with the situations when you can use them to better monitor your infrastructure.

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5 Capabilities You Should Look For in an Application Performance Monitoring Tool

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

With the rapid pace of change in applications and the infrastructure they run on, it’s more important now than ever to monitor what’s happening. Using an application performance monitoring (APM) tool can help provide the necessary visibility and insight you need for proactive and reactive problem resolution. But whether you’re looking for a replacement or have no monitoring in place, where do you start?

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Why Do We Need Network Management? A Practical Explanation

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

Network management is a necessity. With today’s modern infrastructure, there isn’t a whole lot you can do effectively without it. It’s like tech’s version of the old American Express slogan, “Don’t leave home without it.” You have to deal with the ever-changing needs of the business, constant cybersecurity threats, and complex private and public networks. For these reasons, you can’t afford to leave your office or desk without having implemented network management.

So let’s discuss further why we need network management and the consequences of not implementing it. But before we get into those details, let’s briefly describe what network management is.

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A Detailed Guide to Real Time Monitoring

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

Past performance isn’t always a good predictor of “now” performance, so for this reason, real-time monitoring is a critical part of network management.

Organizations must know what’s happening on their network at any given moment. So let’s look at how real-time monitoring can help you accomplish this task.

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How to Analyze Network Traffic, Step by Step

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

If you want to know how to analyze network traffic, you came to the right place.

Analyzing your network’s traffic can be daunting. It involves collecting, storing, and monitoring all the data traversing your on-premises, hybrid, or multi-cloud infrastructure. You’ll need to visualize and search this data for network planning and design. You also need notifications when something’s gone wrong to effectively troubleshoot. So it can be a lot to deal with.

To help you feel better about the whole thing, let’s break down the steps you need to take.

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What Is Network Traffic Analysis? A Helpful Walkthrough

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

Network traffic analysis is the method of collecting, storing, and analyzing traffic across your network. Traffic data is collected in or near real time so you can have up-to-the-second information about what’s happening. This allows you to take action immediately if a problem arises. You can also store this data for historical analysis.

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Service Level Agreement (SLA) Metrics by Example

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

In today’s hybrid and multi-cloud world, you need to be more sure than ever that you have a handle on your service-level agreement (SLA) performance. But how do you make sure your cloud providers are giving you what you’re paying for? You have likely read, or maybe skimmed, their SLA. How do you find out if they’re meeting that SLA? You do so by monitoring your SLA metrics.

In this post, you’ll learn about SLAs and the metrics you can use to monitor their performance. This can help you hold your providers and your team accountable. You’ll also see some examples of SLA metrics to help you get an idea of exactly what you can monitor.

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Why SPAN Port is Bad for Packet Captures

Sometimes when you’re troubleshooting a network problem, you need to look at the packet data. It could be to find security threats or investigate strange network behavior. One of the common ways to capture packet data is with SPAN ports. But with the data deluge found on today’s networks and infrastructure, you can easily run into problems analyzing the packets captured using a SPAN. TCP sequence gaps are one problem that can result from capturing using SPANs.

In this post, let’s get into more about what a SPAN port is. Also, you’ll find out how different capture methods using SPAN can lead to TCP analysis problems and how you can reduce their occurrence.

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What Is Network Management? A Comprehensive Introduction

Note: This post was originally written for the Netreo blog. You can check out the original here.

What Is Network Management?

Network management is the process that helps you know the working state of your network. It also enables you to fix various discovered or undiscovered network problems.

In today’s networks, it’s a complicated exercise to monitor and maintain how well your network is functioning. Network management involves so many different components that you need the right people, technologies, and tools to do it well. So in this post, you’ll learn more about network management, why you need it, and what’s involved.

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Application Monitoring in a Modern Cloud World

Note: This post was originally written for the Cprime blog. You can check out the original here.

Applications are no longer simple two-tier architectures. Back then, application monitoring was easy compared with today. But as the shift to the cloud happened, applications became more efficient and effective. Application architectures now include many tiers across multiple locations and sometimes in multiple clouds.

Monitoring applications with this level of complexity is a challenge, to say the least. So, today’s application monitoring is completely different from just a few years ago. In this post, let’s get into some of the application monitoring changes and how it matters in the modern cloud world.

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