Server Availability Monitoring and Metrics

Running head: SERVER AVAILABILITY MONITORING AND METRICS
Server availability monitoring and metrics
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SERVER AVAILABILITY MONITORING AND METRICS
Executive summary
The report discusses several server availability monitoring tools that aids in better performance of
the server. Organizations face challenges in their regular operation of the server. The monitoring
tools reduce server latency, improve server health, identifies device and monitors network
equipment. The working of the tools avoids server crash down and ensures smooth running of the
server. Thus the tools help in monitoring the servers.

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SERVER AVAILABILITY MONITORING AND METRICS
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
IT Infrastructure-Monitoring Tools........................................................................................................3
Comparison...........................................................................................................................................5
CollectD.............................................................................................................................................5
Ganglia..............................................................................................................................................9
Zabbix..............................................................................................................................................13
WhatsUp Gold.................................................................................................................................17
Server availability monitoring architecture.........................................................................................21
Nagios architecture............................................................................................................................22
Data vulnerability in server availability monitoring tools and solution................................................23
Failure prediction on server availability monitoring tool.....................................................................23
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................23
References...........................................................................................................................................25

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SERVER AVAILABILITY MONITORING AND METRICS
Introduction
Server is a system that provides resources, data and services to client system over a network
channel. Servers to function are configured to receive client requests from the network channel. On
receiving the request the server responds to the requested generated with the required information.
Serve functions include verification of the requestor identity, permission for accessing data
resources and formatting the response [1]. Server monitoring tools are essential tool for
administrating the working of the system. The reports generated by the tools aids in comprehension
of server health, capacity and performance within the immediate operating surrounding. The
automated reporting generates scheduled checks and provides pre-emptive warnings about the
servers working in the environment [2]. The reports generated by the monitoring software keeps a
check on the various server activities. Suspicious logins and activities, resource utilization, response
time and application downtime are be monitored. There are numerous layers present in the
monitoring software which follows aforementioned protocols in sync with the various applications
monitored and also depends on the environment it is running in. Individual software has specific
method or predefined protocol to approach the problem faced by the server system [6]. The
software checks on any degradation in the system impacting service delivery performance and
improves troubleshooting and quality for the entire system stack.
IT Infrastructure-Monitoring Tools
Different IT server monitoring tools are as follows [3]:
(1) Nagios Core
(2) Ganglia
(3) Zabbix
(4) Cacti
(5) CollectD
(6) Spiceworks
(7) Icinga
(8) OpenNMS and
(9) WhatsUp Gold.

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SERVER AVAILABILITY MONITORING AND METRICS
Nagios Core is a customizable and cost-effective open source monitoring tool. The metrics offered by
the tools monitor performance of the server, reporting and remediate services. The core provides
limited monitoring features.
Ganglia [9] is also an open-source monitoring software. The software is designed for computer
systems with high performing speed like grids and clusters. The architecture of the system is scalable
and distributed which is based on the hierarchical design targeting the federations of clusters. XML
and XDR for representation of data and transportation of data respectively are leveraged by Ganglia.
The software engineers algorithms and data structures for maximizing efficiency, thus resulting
overheads for individual node. This monitoring tool supports numerous processors and operating
system.
Collect D- an open source daemon [5]. The software collects performance statistics and stores data
collected in different formats like RRD files. The software can be used in numerous operating
systems. The software usually searches and identifies bottlenecks in performance, predicts load
overtime in the system and creates warning. The software is mainly integrated with graphing tool.
Spiceworks, the server monitoring tool provide insights into servers, SNMP devices, switches and
services. The software is written in Ruby on rails. The tool finds out IP addressing devices, and also
provides knowledge base and help desk functions.
Cacti is a front end tool, graphing tool for data system and also has the capacity to manage data
collection. Gathering of data occurs in cron job via the use of external script which feeds metrics.
Cacti generate graphs for any given dataset. Graphs can be easily created from infrastructure
element which also includes servers and load balancers.
Zabbix [8] an enterprise solution and is equipped with various characteristics and also provides
commercial support. The server monitoring tool checks the response time for services like HTTP. It
also checks the uptime for the responding services.
Icinga is an extension of Nagios. The software provides REST API and database connectors. The new
attribute of the API allows easy integration of various extensions which does not require any
modification of the core directly.

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SERVER AVAILABILITY MONITORING AND METRICS
OpenNMS the software only allows a maximum of ten devices and allows login to a single user. The
system supports simple serving functionality.
WhatsUp Gold: The performance of the applications, servers and network devices’ status in the on-
premise and cloud is visible [7]. The software provides comprehensive interactive map about the
complete network infrastructure. The process monitors devices, servers, applications, traffic flow
and wireless controllers. Real time warning and alerts are generated and the system ensures
optimized performance.
Comparison
CollectD
Disk usage
Figure 1: Disk Usage)
Source: (Created By Author)