Every IT Ops professional knows one thing they hate more than anything – when their boss knows about a problem before they do. Another thing they know is that there are a thousand tools out there that supposedly will help avoid surprises, and yet most of them are too hard to install, too hard to keep up to date and just don’t alert or display in a way that is helpful. I’ve used them all and I’ve learned that the best approach is like your security – have a multi-level approach and don’t just hope that monitoring the edge of things will be enough.

How do you go deep and wide in this? You don’t – your teams do. Each product SME team must monitor in close to their responsibility. They, like you, don’t want you to know before they do. Have the SQL Infrastructure team monitor their systems to ensure transactions are processing – have them use some synthetic transactions to return values that show the databases are healthy and alert them if they are not or don’t answer. Have the Storage Team use the produce monitoring – Nimble’s Infosight analytics service will make this so easy for them that they will know 3 months out before anything fills up or IOPs are used up. Each group has it’s specific tool, but you – you need a way to keep everyone on their toes, and yourself informed. You also need a way to display it so that your boss can do a drive by, see it’s all OK, and walk away knowing you’ve got it all in hand. Four little letters – PRTG.

PRTG has come a long way and added so much functionality in recent years that it deserves to be a part of your tool belt. What will make your job easier? PRTG has it!

• Agentless set up for monitoring your network
• An agent to monitor a remote network device
• Flexible Alerting – SMS, Email, Alarm Audio Files, Trigger workflow
• An Interface that can be where you are looking at a 60” Display, a PC, Tablet, iOS device
• Maps, Dashboards, Traffic Charts – all customizable and accessible via a URL

You get it right? You want it all, but you want it to be easy, to be used, not to collect more virtual dust in your fast paced, leave it behind if it won’t work world. PRTG installs in minutes and will add value day one, and there’s no need to spend money to find out if that’s true.

Let STL Communications help you set up a free 30-day trial of PRTG. STL can show you the power to KNOW what is going on in the moment – not when your boss calls you out. Being ahead of the game – well, that’s the way to sleep through the night rather than work through it. Contact us at (314) 205-7100 or email info@stlcom.com!