Network experts collect information about their system and performance to identify the cause of problems. This approach is similar to how detectives gather witness statements to solve a crime. We never know what part of the collected data will help in a particular case. This is why it is essential to collect as much data as possible to have a broad background for investigation.
It’s easy to collect lots of data now because the power of processing goes up and the cost of storing data is going down. The main challenge is to effectively analyze the collected data to identify the most pressing problems in a timely manner. At the same time, you need to be aware of network performance trends to proactively prevent new problems from happening.
The common fear among network engineers is that gathering a lot of network monitoring data can cause too many alerts. If you have too many alerts, you might miss important ones. Turning off unnecessary alerts could lead to overlooking important information that might help you prevent bigger issues in your network.
VP at AdRem Software
What is the way out of data overload and alert floods?
Network administrators complain that they sometimes get too many notifications, making it hard to find important problems among all the alerts. Additionally, false positive alarms and the lack of context or gaps in monitoring scope can further complicate troubleshooting efforts. IT teams need network monitoring software to faster analyze network data like detectives need assistants to analyze clues.
We talked to Ela Mistachowicz, who is a VP at AdRem Software. AdRem has identified the best practices to help IT teams solve problems faster by managing alerts better. These are the concepts that have been proved while working with NetCrunch customers.
Engineers need to see relevant, persisting problems first
Nobody wants to look through lots of logs or messages and realize the problem is already fixed. Can your IT team easily identify and focus on ongoing, unresolved issues? Can your monitoring software focus on open alerts instead of sending notifications for every alert?
NetCrunch comes with the “active alerts” functionality, filtering out resolved or closed alerts. The IT team focuses on current issues, responds quickly, and avoids missing critical problems.
You can decide what alerts must be notified about. Some alerts may be assigned to specific team members, based on their responsibilities and schedule. For other alerts, automatic remote actions may be executed first to resolve them without human input.
Don’t bother a busy team with temporary peaks
Context is key in network monitoring. Some overloaded networks may send bursts of alerts that resolve quickly, only adding to alert noise. Adjusting your alert settings is important for controlling alerts to fit your network and performance level.
NetCrunch allows you to edit alert conditions to make them less sensitive or noisy thus reducing alert volume. For example, you can set up alerts to notify you only if a problem persists for more than 30 minutes. Or trigger alerts when an issue occurs at least three times within 5 minutes.
Finally, you can also configure alerts to only go off during work hours. This flexibility allows you to adjust monitoring and alerting settings to fit your network’s context. You can even apply these changes to hundreds of nodes at once using monitoring packs or multi-selection functionality in NetCrunch.
What is the best way to handle false alarms or alert floods that scare people away from full-scope monitoring?
False alarms that easily become alert floods may be echoes of real problems received from secondary devices or endpoints. The smart way to prevent such situations from happening is by using monitoring dependencies to suppress such alerts.
NetCrunch automatically detects and understands the dependencies between network nodes. In the case of a problematic router, NetCrunch suppresses secondary alerts from devices behind the router. This allows network experts to focus on resolving the root cause without being overwhelmed by subsequent alerts, preventing alert floods.
Executing automatic actions in response to alerts before humans are involved
NetCrunch offers a range of diagnostic and self-healing actions that can be automatically executed in response to alerts. For example, when an alert indicates that a service is down, NetCrunch can remotely restart the service. Imagine receiving an alert that a critical application service has stopped. NetCrunch can automatically restart a process in response to the alert to save time and reduce user impact.
Automatic remediation actions eliminate the need for human intervention to solve basic IT problems. This frees up time for teams to engage in more complicated issues where their time is more meaningful and offers greater value. In this way, people perform at a higher level than before.
Helping team members prioritize issues
People need to receive information about the areas they are responsible for. NetCrunch allows you to filter out alerts so that they reach the most appropriate person to resolve the issue first.
For instance, let’s say you have a team member responsible for managing databases. NetCrunch allows you to target your database-related alerts to that person. It ensures that they are informed of what they need to diagnose the issue, without being overwhelmed with unnecessary messages. This helps them to act quickly and efficiently.
Managing alerts within the IT team
What if a particular network admin cannot work on some alerts simultaneously due to ongoing tasks?
NetCrunch makes it simpler to set up alerts that trigger a set of escalation actions in response to alerts such as remotely rebooting machines, running services, restarting processes, etc. For example, if a remote corrective action does not solve the problem within 10 minutes, NetCrunch will notify a specific team member. If the problem remains unresolved for another 15 minutes, it can notify a group of administrators. This automation speeds up troubleshooting and reduces the need for manual intervention while keeping the alert volume lower.
Can admins share or forward selected information to other people or departments?
Sometimes, IT staff must communicate alerts or problems to people outside the department. For example, a marketing team needs to be aware of any website issues. NetCrunch integrates seamlessly with popular messaging and helpdesk systems. Relevant alerts can be automatically forwarded to specific messaging or helpdesk systems, improving information flow with other teams. It also lowers the risk of duplicating help desk tickets for the same alerts, reducing mean time to resolve.
NetCrunch can convert an alert into a ticket in JIRA or a message in Teams, Slack, or Trello. Relevant teams can get notified automatically. Such integrations foster collaboration, ensuring everyone is aware of the relevant issue and can work together to resolve it efficiently.
Increased expectations from network monitoring software today
In today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape, network experts must move beyond outdated business software expectations. Traditional tools have proven to be slow, and difficult to use, resulting in data floods that hindered effective troubleshooting. Modern systems such as NetCrunch can help network experts work faster and fix problems quicker with
automation, analytics, and proactive solutions both for on-premise networks and for cloud-based or outsourced services.
Implementing smart alert management helps network experts overcome the common pains associated with monitoring large and mid-sized computer networks. NetCrunch automates alert resolution with features like event correlation, conditional alerts, escalation scripts, diagnostics, and integrations. It’s time to expect more from network monitoring software and embrace a smart approach to network troubleshooting.
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