Data storage is one of the most evolving features of businesses today, and with the rapidly changing landscape of data protection, enterprises will have to adopt new and improved ways of data monitoring and storage. The challenges faced by businesses are immense and are bound to increase with further technological advancements. Therefore, monitoring is a very important aspect of managing data storage, and that is the reason why it is so important to monitor every minute detail of the data centers diligently.
You can find a number of DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) software that you can use to monitor your data. However, you need to find the one that is best suitable for your business needs and can help you keep up with the monitoring demands in recent times. Following are some of the benefits of having a good data monitoring system in place in your enterprise:
Provide Insights and Facilitates Decision Making
Monitoring is not only important in ensuring that your data storage system is working properly, but it is also important and critical in shaping and creating your entire IT strategy. Your IT systems should be designed to deliver the best and finest performance to your customers. But with the changes in technology and business needs, you need a good monitoring system to be sure that your IT infrastructure is delivering and performing as per the client's needs.
Monitoring your data storage systems allows you to create a benchmark for your performance. In the absence of a good monitoring system in place, it will be impossible for you to know and track the performance of your IT infrastructure. Efficient monitoring allows you to access information that is valuable and critical, not only for your IT division but also for your company's stakeholders. More often than not, the directors of a company have very little or no knowledge about the performance of their Data Storage environments until and unless the business faces an actual risk. Monitoring your systems will facilitate you in reducing your risks and managing your systems proactively.
Catching Smaller Issues Before They Become Major Problems
Closely monitoring your data systems and keep an eye on every small detail will place you in a better position to prevent major disasters. Frequent health checks and supervising failure patterns of your IT systems will allow you to identify any inconsistency in your system and figure out a correlation. Imagine your IT system is running at full capacity, how will you that know this if you do not monitor your system regularly? You will only find out when an issue occurs, and it is too late. Monitoring data storage systems will allow you to detect any issue, such as network congestion, in time to resolve it before it affects your clients and end users. Closely monitoring your systems will allow you to understand the warning signs and rectify the issue before it increases to the point that it affects your users. This approach will not only relieve the pressure from your IT department but will also help you in providing the best services to your clients without any disruptions.
Improve Performance and Productivity
Monitoring not only help you find problems but it also helps in identifying areas of your systems that need improvement. This enables you to modify your IT infrastructure in a way that ensures the best and highest possible performance. Diligent monitoring will help your team get a better understanding of how the systems work and interact with each other. Rather than sitting and waiting for a problem to occur, you will be able to proactively recognize aspects of the network that needs improvement. Identifying potential weak points will help your team in preventing any future disruptions or downtime for the end users.
Budgeting and Planning for IT Upgrades
Just like any hardware machine your IT software also go through depreciation and need constant tracking and monitoring to keep track of its overall health. How will you know that your software needs an upgrade if you are not constantly and effectively monitoring it? The performance of your software system will change with time and so should your strategy. Not only is it important to monitor the current performance of your IT tools, but it is also important to keep a check on your technological assets and keep track of when they need upgrading.
Reduce Downtime
Downtimes is not only detrimental to your customer's productivity and experience, but it will ultimately have an effect on your company's outcome. Regular monitoring will help you understand the patterns and allow you to proactively solve all the minor issues. The proactive approach means more than just taking all the information at face value, this means that if your network is working it does not necessarily mean that it is working efficiently, and it will not face any problems in the future. This is the reason why you need to closely follow the patterns and learn to identify the difference between a healthy network and a network that is barely running before it finally collapses.
How Can NetApp Training and Certification Help You with Data Monitoring?
NetApp training and certification such as ONTAP Cluster Administration and ONTAP Performance Analysis will help your employees in identifying even minor risks before they become major problems. NetApp has efficient data storage and monitoring systems that you can incorporate in your business to proactively find any anomaly in your IT system. NetApp training and certification will help your team react immediately to any performance related issue or downtime because they are trained to read patterns and identify any irregularity within the network environment. Investing in the NetApp training of your employees may seem like a big investment, but when you look at the big picture and account for all the benefits that it has for your enterprise, you will realize that it is a very small price to pay for ensuring qualified staff which in turn means happy and satisfied end users.
Get in touch with one of our NetApp ONTAP Storage experts today, to learn more about our training modules.