Monitoring is a term used in information systems for tracking the performance of complex and large-scale systems. It helps to detect problems in advance. It aids in system monitoring and has the capability to instantly notify the system administrator of specified events.

What is Monitoring?

Monitoring is a tracking and surveillance system used to ensure the continuity of operations in computing systems. Simply put, it can be thought of as adapting the Task Manager application on a personal computer with the Windows operating system to a broader system. It collects, archives, and reports performance values across the entire system. Monitoring systems track various data such as the up-down status, CPU, disk, RAM values, and incoming-outgoing traffic of servers, network devices, services, software, and websites operating within a network. If predefined threshold values are exceeded, it triggers alarms and notifies via communication tools like SMS and email.

What is the Purpose of Monitoring?

Monitoring helps keep a 24/7 operating system up and running. For example, consider your business’s digital infrastructure, which includes dozens of devices. These include vital systems such as CRM and ERP systems processing your business's digital data, a VPN server for your remote employees, your camera recording system, firewall devices, and others. Suppose you experience access issues with the CRM application. With a monitoring system, you can instantly see if the disk is full. To prevent this issue from recurring, you can set up an event in the monitoring system to ""notify when the disk of the server running the CRM application reaches 80%"" and arrange for an email to be sent to the responsible IT personnel.

The capabilities of monitoring systems include:

• 24/7 system monitoring.
• Produces reports and graphs from the collected data.
• Performs basic cybersecurity monitoring like detecting real-time password attempts and incorrect logins.
• Tracks logs.
• Has warning mechanisms before problems occur.
• Executes tasks such as running commands when an event occurs.

How Does Monitoring Work?

Monitoring operates within a topology that includes system, software, and interface layers. In the system layer, devices for performance monitoring are located. In the software layer, services that monitor the system operate. In the interface layer, the software displays the collected data to the system administrator, creates graphs, and generates reports.

Before implementing monitoring, systems of vital importance in the system are identified. Depending on the system’s compatibility, an agent is installed for the software layer to monitor. The agent is suitable for devices like virtual servers and operates like the explorer.exe service on a Windows server. It can also be installed on Linux servers. For systems where agent installation is not suitable, agentless methods like SNMP and WMI protocols are applied. Alternative methods such as reading from a file are also available.

The data collected by the software, both with and without an agent, is stored in a database. In the interface layer, a web application reads real-time data from the database. Reports from past data can be created, and graphs can be produced. Comparisons can be made. Threshold values can be set according to levels like information, critical, and warning, and notification settings can be adjusted.

What are the Types of Monitoring?

Some types of monitoring include:

• Infrastructure monitoring: Tracks the life status of hardware in the IT infrastructure. It helps determine the ideal operating cycle of physical systems and guides in reducing downtime and detecting causes of interruptions.
• Server and system monitoring: A server-focused monitoring system. It tracks server performance and guides the scalability and expansion of servers.
• Cloud monitoring: Monitors using cloud infrastructure. It particularly helps in tracking the performance of web applications and monitors both virtual and physical systems accessible through the cloud.
• Network monitoring: Focused on monitoring network traffic. It tracks total, incoming, and outgoing traffic based on port, IP, device, and service.
• Security monitoring: Focuses on security-oriented tracking of everything on the system. It records cybersecurity threats like unauthorized access and attack traffic and notifies the system administrator.
• Application performance monitoring: Known as APM, it tracks data exchange between the application and the end-user. It monitors the performance of systems related to the application based on the actions performed by the end-user through the application.