Zero-in on Application Monitoring Best Practices

Running a successful business means using the right tools and applications, a main reason why application monitoring is such an important part of any business.

With that said, there are a number of best practices to keep in mind when monitoring and managing your business applications.

Here are just a few best practices your business should follow when monitoring applications:

Hire the Right Network Engineer

Although it goes without saying, it's important to make sure you're using the right application monitoring tools for your business needs.

You'd be surprised how many businesses use monitoring software that isn't even designed for the applications they already have in place.

Using the right monitoring tools boils down to how familiar your network engineer is with your apps and your system.

Make sure he or she knows the difference between the various monitoring features available. Likewise, make sure your network engineer is familiar with common application performance metrics.

With a well-versed network engineer on your side, you can rest assured that your application monitoring tools match the complexity of your network. This is critical, especially when application failure takes place.

Customize Application Alerts

Speaking of application failure, creating customized application alerts is a best practice every business should follow.

Most application monitoring tools come with default alerts that monitor overall app failures, but specific failures are oftentimes overlooked in this scenario.

With customized application alerts, you can monitor your business applications based on a granular scale. Major failures can be moved to the top of the alert list, which allows your IT team to handle larger issues first.

As the following article looks at, when it comes to application monitoring, customized alerts are definitely 1 of the 6 application monitoring best practices you can begin using today.

Be Proactive

No matter how well your system runs or how in tune your network engineer is, all applications suffer from downtime issues. That's why it's important to never assume alert-free monitoring means your system has flawless uptime.

In fact, if your application monitoring tools ever do go quite for days on end, there's probably something wrong with the tools themselves.

Make sure you take a proactive approach to your application monitoring and test your tools even when everything is running smoothly. If anything, proactive monitoring will help you pinpoint configuration issues within your system.

Document the Monitoring Process

Although your network engineer knows your system and applications through and through, it's still important to document the application monitoring protocol you have in place. This gives your business something to fall back on when setup and implementation issues arise or if your engineer ever leaves his or her position.

Documentation doesn't have to be a difficult process.

By simply documenting the monitoring software you're using and in which capacity you're using it, you'll have a systematic framework to rely on if you ever need to rebuild your monitoring tools.

Besides, documentation in any business process is a best practice habit worth adopting.

When your business is ready to zero-in on application monitoring, keep in mind the best practice pointers above.