Monitoring and its importance

According to Wikipedia, “Monitoring generally means to be aware of the state of a system”. It is an essential part of any organization, state, government and even family. Monitoring helps us to avoid circumstances that may cause loss to time, money, resource, relation, etc. For instance, let us take a very simple example of a business organization lacking efficient internal monitoring system. This may lead to many circumstances such as server break down, power failure, etc. It causes delay in work, wastage of time, loss of money, loss of resources, etc plus an additional expense that the organization will have to bare to solve the issue.


Being more specific, we can say that monitoring should be done appropriately according to priority. As I work in an IT industry, I know the importance of servers, network, computers, etc in an organization. Hence, these must be the first things to be monitored effectively and efficiently to avoid break downs and hindrances in smooth work flow.

A computer network must be constantly monitored to avoid slow or failing network. Continuous monitoring is done be a system that notifies the network administrator in case of outages. An intrusion detection system monitors networks from outside threats, whereas an internal network monitoring system monitors network to avoid problems such as overload, network crash, etc. Network monitoring is a critical IT function that can aid in saving a lot of cost of the company in network performance, infrastructure, employee productivity and many other things. Following are some of the strategic tasks a network monitoring system can do for the organization:

• Confirm regulatory and policy compliance

• Search redundant resources and emphasizes on possible cost savings

• Solve efficiency-sapping mysteries like dropped mail sessions

• Help determine employee productivity

• Spot overloaded equipment before it can bring down a network

• Identify weak wide-area-network links and other bottlenecks

• Measure latency, or the delayed transfer of data

• Find anomalous internal traffic that might be indicate a security threat

Server monitoring is done to have a check on the speed of the server, failures and other such problems. By this the owner will be able to know when one or all of his computer devices are down due to server issues. Monitoring if done regularly, can avoid outages and help company from losses due to major crashes and break downs.

Monitoring equipments help to take immediate actions and respond to the problems before it becomes an unavoidable issue and start harming the devices, processes, time and cost. Network monitoring systems can be software or firmware, simple or complex. There are open-source tools available which are innovation and very inexpensive. They can work with most of the tools, platforms and environments. If you feel that your network is too complex and it requires professional skills to monitor, you can always outsource monitoring. Outsourcing companies offer wide level of services and packages that can suit your budget. Their professional touch will make it all the more advantageous for the organization.

ACS Services is one such company that provides IT services for easy management. Its list of services includes:

• Managed IT Services

• Network Support

• Server Support

• PC Support

• Help Desk Services

• Help Desk On Demand

• Setup and Configuration

• Relocation Support

• Data Protection

• Total Server Protection

• Disaster Recovery

It is a one-stop destination for all your IT needs. Now professional monitoring is not too far away. For more information, visit:

http://www.acs.com/

Other sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_monitoring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_server_monitoring

http://www.cio.com/article/133700/Network_Monitoring_Definition_and_Solutions


- Brian Kingsley, Director of Technical Services, Boston

ACS Services deployed VMware View for AGAR Supply

AGAR Supply Co. is one of the largest independent food distributors in New England and thirteenth largest in United States. Last year AGAR Supply faced a massive desktop refresh due to its majority hardware nearing end of life. As much of their work depends upon high availability of desktops, they were searching for some software which could increase user productivity with minimal capital expenditure. Hence they selected VMware View and gave the responsibility of designing, testing and deploying the software to ACS Services. To know more about the scope of services of ACS, you can visit http://www.acs.com/

Let us discuss about some of the main features of VMware and how was it helpful for AGAR Supply:

• Simplified desktop management: As all work of AGAR is dependent on desktop availability, this feature helped their users to access their desktops from anywhere at any point of time regardless of hardware.

• Superior End User Experience: It has a wide range of deployment options which ACS Services worked with, and due to this it provided the end users a high-performance desktop experience even with high latency and low bandwidth connections.

• Built-in Security: End users of AGAR were able to access their personalized desktop, complete with applications and data, from any location, at any time without jeopardizing the corporate security policies. VMware View helps to secure the datacenter.

• Availability: VMware View delivers high availability, with no single point of failure. It helped them to protect their desktop environment cost-effectively.

• Offline Desktop: Offline Desktop, an experimental feature in VMware View 4, increases productivity by allowing you to run managed virtual desktops locally or in the datacenter through the same administration framework. Simply download a virtual desktop onto your local client device. All existing security policies for that virtual desktop continue to be applied and enforced. Later, you can check the desktop back into the datacenter for resynchronization.

VMware View helps AGAR save their time, money (Up to $135,000 annually), energy and resources. It also helped them with smoother business continuity. “The implementation went smoothly and over 250 users are now leveraging VMware View desktops.” says Steve Weber, Network Administrator at AGAR Supply. Weber and his team worked closely with ACS Services, Inc. to design, test, and deploy VMware View. “We are extremely happy with the results”, he signs off.

ACS Services is an IT outsourcing firm based in Boston. ACS is a leading provider of Small Business IT Support in Boston and the surrounding areas. Since 1985, ACS has prided itself on being a leader in Small Business IT Support, IT Managed Services and Data Protection, and has gained a reputation of providing outstanding services to our clients. ACS partners with top hardware and software vendors to provide our clients with effective and time-tested solutions for all of their Managed Services needs. With over 100 years of combined technology experience including Small Business IT Support, IT Managed Services, Network Support, Server Support, Disaster Recovery, and IT Consultation, you can rest assured that your every technology need will be met with ACS.

Sources of information:

http://www.vmware.com/a/customers/customer/567/AGAR+Supply

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_View

http://www.agarsupply.com/

http://www.acs.com/



- Brian Kingsley, Director of Technical Services, ACS Services, Boston