5 Everyday Network Issues Your Business Shouldn't Have

Every day of the week, system administrators work to ensure a smooth business process, with the goal of reducing and preventing malfunctions and failures that result in lost time as well as financial loss.

We’ve found that many IT professionals face the same challenges when it comes to improving productivity and preventing downtimes. Fortunately, there is a simple solution that allows administrators to focus their time and expertise on important IT projects instead of putting out small fires. Whether you’re relying on email and databases or running a website or online shop, network monitoring ensures that you can track the availability of systems, services, applications and bandwidth usage and stay informed of potentially serious issues, before they become a major problem.

Here’s a look at how network monitoring tools can alleviate many of the everyday issues IT professionals face each day:

Early Recognition of Potential Hardware Issues

Wondering why your applications are slow? Unsure of whether you need to update your hardware resources to prevent failures? Your IT infrastructure needs constant review to ensure the health of your system. Whether it’s checking the temperature of your servers or knowing when your hard disks will be full, network monitoring allows you to get precise details and historical reports about all of your components. This data provides insight on broader trends – including when resources are going to run out and warning you in the event of the unexpected such as server outages. Improved access to the most important details of your infrastructure makes it easier to stay on top of your resources and helps you determine whether costly upgrades are necessary.

Poor Web Page Performance

Is your webpage so slow that it turns off potential customers? The availability and loading times of web pages are crucial, not only for e-commerce sites but for any organisation looking to make it easy for customers and stakeholders to connect. If a buying process fails due to technical errors, or browsing items on your page is a horrible experience, you will lose customers and money. Network monitoring tools can alert you to these issues, showing the loading times and measuring performance. It also helps you understand more about your page’s traffic peaks, so that you know when it’s time to allocate more bandwidth.

Unreliable Virtual Environments

Frustrated by virtual machines that keep crashing? Network monitoring offers options to help you keep a close eye on your virtual environments. Sensors (measuring points) can monitor everything from the CPU and memory usage to the network speed as well as the hardware hosting the virtual machine. This allows you to understand immediately where the problem may lie, which means less time spent troubleshooting.

Failing Windows Services and Server Hang-Ups

Problems with Outlook are a fairly common experience for many organisations, which means more headaches for IT professionals. If a service on a server fails, one of the most common fixes is to reboot the server to get the failing service back online. New network monitoring tools allow you the option to reboot the server automatically, even if you’re out of the office, giving you more flexibility and improving the organisation’s recovery time. They also offer numerous types of alert notifications, including by SMS or even within monitoring smartphone apps, to keep you informed of any outages before they become a major problem.

Security Issues in Your Network

How can you be sure that your network is safe? Rather than acting as a front line security tool like a virus scanner, a network monitor is more like a security command centre; overseeing the whole security picture of a network. While it’s important that antivirus scanners are running and the latest updates are installed, it’s also critical that you keep track of unusual activity. Network monitoring makes it easy to detect suspicious usage such as unusual CPU and traffics peaks and runs checks on the network connections. It can keep an eye on your current security solutions, making sure they’re online, as well as keeping an eye out for under-the-radar activity.

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Paessler AG leads the industry in providing the most powerful, affordable and easy-to-use network monitoring and testing solutions.