When companies think about monitoring their infrastructures, the need to prevent cyberattacks often comes to mind because of recent acts of cyberterrorism.
For example, on April 29, 2021, a ransomware attack, allegedly carried out by Russian cyber terrorists, caused the Colonial Pipeline — which supplies gas to much of the eastern U.S. — to shut down on May 7th, leading gas prices to skyrocket and some gas stations to run out of gasoline due to hoarding.
However, infrastructure monitoring isn’t just about surveilling your company’s systems for suspicious activity and potential outages. Monitoring performance and ensuring proper governance are key aspects of infrastructure monitoring.
For organizations that use a cloud infrastructure, that’s where cloud infrastructure monitoring comes in. But what is it?
Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring
Today’s complex cloud models, including hybrid cloud and multicloud, can make monitoring your cloud infrastructure challenging. Cloud infrastructure monitoring is software that makes it possible to visualize and track the performance of cloud applications and services across your infrastructure using real-time data.
Software tools collect and organize data related to network availability, application performance, and the allocation of workload resources. With cloud infrastructure monitoring, your company can determine if cloud services are operating optimally and securely. Cloud infrastructure monitoring can detect anomalies that may signal malicious activity, identify the root cause, and prevent traumatic events.
Why Your Company Needs Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring
Leading business magazine Forbes cautioned businesses that it is a mistake to have “a set-and-forget” attitude toward their cloud infrastructure. Making recommendations for cloud governance, Forbes stated that “monitoring activity combined with automation, machine learning, data science and analytics is the key to gaining accurate, calculated and actionable visibility in the cloud.” This sounds like a prescription for cloud infrastructure monitoring.
Cloud infrastructure monitoring provides the 360-degree view of the cloud environment — including its supporting network and storage resources — needed for proper governance. Advanced analytics can be used to gain insights into risk and predict potential attacks or outages so they can be prevented before they occur. Automated tools take over the manual monitoring tasks that typically monopolize your IT staff or require a fully staffed security operations center (SOC).
Leading Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring Solutions
NetApp and Cisco offer two leading cloud infrastructure solutions: NetApp Cloud Insights and Cisco AppDynamics with Cloud Native Visualization.
NetApp Cloud Insights is hosted in the cloud, making it fast to deploy and easy to use. Cloud Insights provides real-time visibility into cloud and on-premises resources through data. Your company can track the availability and use of your entire cloud infrastructure. The solution conducts an inventory of your cloud assets and their interdependencies so you can understand how your applications are being supported.
Cisco cloud infrastructure monitoring assesses the health of your company’s cloud-based environment and proactively monitors availability, performance, and security to identify and solve problems before they affect users. Cisco takes a holistic, scalable, and cost-effective approach to cloud infrastructure monitoring.
How to Get Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring
Now you know the what and the why of cloud infrastructure monitoring, but how do you get it? Both NetApp and Cisco have great options. However, you need a technology partner to help you choose the right solution and implement it as part of your overall cloud strategy.
ProActive Solutions includes cloud as one of our core infrastructure solutions, offering public, private, hybrid, and multicloud solutions along with consultation and support services. We partner with both NetApp and Cisco so your company can deploy whichever cloud monitoring solution meets your needs.
Take advantage of our consultative approach to cloud. Ask for a quote from ProActive for cloud solutions.
