Just like storage technologies and network elements (switches, routers), servers are the basic foundation of an information system. Servers house the computing resources needed to run applications. By various means, servers connect to the information handled by the applications: local disks, direct SATA/SAS/SCSI connection to storage systems, connection via SAN or IP network to advanced storage systems, implementing high availability functions on the scale of a computer room, a geographical site or several remote geographical sites.
Supervision: why and how?
Whether you are a user of IT applications, SaaS/Paas/Iaas services, the availability and performance of servers are essential to your satisfaction. Therefore, it is essential to monitor all server hardware and software characteristics.
What are the elements to supervise on a server?
Key points of server monitoring, hardware side :
- the temperature
- the state of the components (fans, power supplies)
- the discs
- RAID systems
- memory
- processors
- the peripherals
The servers have redundant elements, with hot swapping: it is therefore clear that with continuous monitoring of the server hardware and an efficient incident handling process, the permanent hardware availability of the servers is an easily achievable goal.
Key points of server monitoring, software side :
- the use of RAM
- swap
- storage space
- processors
- network cards
For detailed supervision of server performance, it is necessary to supervise the length of the queues at processor and disk level. Disk supervision is also relevant because it is a determining factor in ensuring the performance of data access: the speed and latency of read/write operations must be implemented in the context of server supervision.
How to set up supervision on a server?
Given the wealth of possibilities offered by server manufacturers, setting up server monitoring can be a long and tedious task. This will be all the more rapid and efficient if the user of the supervision application can count on a complete catalogue of service models, organized in the form of equipment models. On this subject, discover the possibilities offered by the ServiceNav catalogue.
