Data center network monitoring best practices part 1: Metrics and alerts
One of the least loved areas of any data center network is monitoring. This is ironic because at its core, the network has two goals: 1) Get packets from A to B 2) Make sure packets got from A to B. It is not uncommon in the deployments I’ve seen for the monitoring budget to be effectively $0, and generally, an organization’s budget also reflects their priorities. Despite spending thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars on networking equipment to facilitate goal #1 from above, there is often little money, thought and time spent in pursuit of Goal #2. In the next several paragraphs I’ll go into some basic data center network monitoring best practices that will work with any budget.
It is not hard to see why monitoring the data center network can be a daunting task. Monitoring your network, just like designing your network, takes a conscious plan of action. Tooling in the monitoring space today is highly fragmented with over 100+ “best of breed” tools that each accommodate a specific use case. Just evaluating all the tools would be a full time job. A recent Big Panda Report and their video overview of it (38 mins) Continue reading
