Geek Speak

I've been involved in a lot of conversations recently both here internally at SolarWinds and within the community regarding whose responsible for monitoring what. Are the networking folks responsible for monitoring server hardware? Are the systems folks responsible for monitoring virtual switches? Does the NOC do application level monitoring?

In most cases, the answer to all of the above questions is 'YES'. As a matter of fact, in most organizations there is a lot of monitoring overlap - even if there is a dedicated group for monitoring. Most networking shops want to at least monitor the server infrastructure, server ports on the switches, and layer 4 connectivity to applications. Most systems shops want to monitor available bandwidth, relevant network paths, and virtual switching infrastructure. Then of course you have the monitoring and/or NOC teams that need to monitor everything and we haven't even talked about the security folks...

Another way to look at it would be to focus on the monitoring technology/data. Let's say for instance that you're using Orion and the APM, NetFlow, and VoIP modules. While the perspectives and therefore reporting needs are different, in most cases all of the groups above want access to information collected via NetFlow, information on system and network performance, application availability, VoIP calls stats, and etc.

I'd like to hear from you on what you're responsible for (network, systems, monitoring, security) and where you draw the demarc in terms of what you want to have visibility in to from a monitoring perspective.

Thanks and hope ya'll have a great weekend.

Josh