Server Monitoring Software: Four Essential Features

Your servers are a critical part of your network. If something were to happen to them, you would be facing a crippling network outage that could end up leaving you with a painful bill.

You can't afford to let your servers go down - each minute they're down ends up costing you revenue and customers. To really guarantee that you're protecting your network, you need server monitoring software.

Server Monitoring Software Protection

Protecting your network doesn't have to be a complicated task. Simple and easy solutions exist to monitor your servers - meaning you get the protection you need against environmental conditions threatening your equipment.

Not all server monitoring systems are created equal. Many solutions cut corners to create the cheapest possible price - only to get rid of essential features that make the server monitoring system effective. Using a poorly designed system leaves you with a false sense of security - you'll think your network and servers are protected, but in reality you're just as exposed.

Four Essential Features

If you want to truly protect your network, you'll make sure your server monitoring software has these 4 essential features:

1. 24/7 Alert Capabilities - You can't sit at your desk and monitor the temperature of your server environment 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Doing so would be a waste of time and resources. You need flexible alert methods that can notify you no matter where you are, or the time of day. Look for a monitoring system that can alert you via email, pages, SMS text messages, or voice alerts to your phone.
2. Intelligent Alarm Descriptions - Free or cheap monitoring software will lack the key details that lead to results when things go wrong. You'll receive vague alerts that contain no meaningful detail and leave you scrambling to try and figure out the problem. When it comes to responding to network emergencies, you don't have time to look up what "Relay 116 Out" means - you need the location, timestamp, severity, and individual details of the alarm. Meaningful alarm descriptions are the difference between preventing service outages and having to deal with all of the expensive repairs, the lost revenue, and the angry customers wondering why they lost service.
3. Graphical User Interface - With poorly designed server monitoring software, you'll likely be stuck with just a list of alarms - and nothing more. There is a huge difference between managing your alarms via a text-only list and managing them with an intuitive GUI. Responding to network emergencies and training new technicians are much easier when you can see geographic locations, floor plans, and actual photos of your equipment. Managing your network will be significantly easier with a powerful GUI.
4. History/Event Logging - You'll likely have multiple users managing your alarms, so you'll absolutely need to have some to keep track of what everyone is doing. Many monitoring systems aren't designed to truly support multiple users, which ends up leading to problems very quickly. If someone slips up and makes a mistake, it's essential you know who, when, and where, so you can correct the problem ASAP. With the wrong server monitoring software, you'll have no idea where to go or what to do in the event of a serious network situation - exactly when you need all the details you can get.

Choose the Right Server Monitoring Software

Can you picture how much more reliable your network could be? The instant there's a threat to your servers, you'll be the first to know - giving you an edge preventing an outage. By preventing a single outage, your server monitoring could pay for itself several times over. Think of all that extra money you could save.

Protecting your network uptime is a serious task - and you need a serious solution. If you refuse to cut corners and want a truly effective solution for monitoring your servers, then I recommend taking a few minutes to download and read the free Server Room Monitoring White Paper from DPS Telecom.

With this free white paper you'll learn...

• How server room monitoring works
• How to pick a reliable server monitor
• How server room monitoring systems collect alarms

With the information from this free guide, you'll quickly become equipped to picking out the right solution for your network.

Expert Consultation - At No Cost to You
If you want to speak with server monitoring experts to ensure your server monitoring project is as smooth as possible...

• Call 1-800-693-0351
• Email sales@dpstele.com
• Use the form below to submit a fast information request to Mac Smith