Infrastructure Health & RMM
Copyright AKAVEIL Technologies LLC all rights reserved
Written by Mike Alan
Technologies must be monitored and managed for optimal performance, reliability, security, and continued availability. Similar to human health, where guidelines for eating, sleeping, drinking lots of water, exercise, dressing appropriately for the weather and so on can protect from illness, the appropriate preventive measures for IT infrastructure and end points also exist.
Humans may also exhibit symptoms that lead them to adjust or correct themselves against the guidance. Or perhaps visit or consult with expert healthcare providers to get diagnosed, receive advice and/ or medication to restore health back to normal.
Many types of IT tools (software, automation, portals) are used to monitor and watch for abnormalities of infrastructure of all types and to provide early warnings via alerts, trigger appropriate actions and keep the infrastructure healthy. The stronger your defenses the healthier you are – right?
Proactive vs. Reactive
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, is a common phrase and ever so true. No one enjoys being sick and out of commission for extended periods of time. There are costs associated, such as loss of ability to perform work and time is ultimately money.
A healthy IT infrastructure is your business. Incidents should be avoided as much as possible. The goal of IT service provision is to protect and prevent first and foremost and be as knowledgeable and prepared to react in those circumstances when necessary. RMM tools are used to handle healthcare concerns of technologies.
RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management)
Your IT service provider will install the RMM software onto each agreed end point.
End Points – are devices or environments to be monitored and managed within the customer’s infrastructure. This is inclusive of physical, virtual and cloud.
Monitoring and Alerting – based on the configured settings for end points, the tool is watching for healthy and unhealthy conditions (events) and will send alerts in the format specified. For example, notification via email or opening of a ticket for further investigation or both.
Events being monitored may be informational, warnings or exceptions to normal. For example: storage is within normal parameters (informational). Storage is above normal range (warning). Storage has exceeded its threshold (exception).
Rules and filters – work together and are configured by the service provider. This sets up the success of the monitoring, alerting and subsequent actions to be taken across the end points for the conditions being monitored. Resulting actions (tasks) may engage self-healing, informational only logging, alerts, triggering processes and humans as required. As RMM tool has many capabilities, it is imperative that a tool expert assists in its setup and configuration to achieve the goals of the customer.
Self-healing – runs an automated script to correct circumstances when triggered by the alerting.
Antivirus protection – is included in the RMM tool to prevent infection from known viruses and attacks.
Patching – end points and operating systems require installing patches from the vendors. These may be to improve performance, fix bugs or to mitigate security risks. The RMM tracks what patches have been installed, dates and times for a historic audit trail and to enable roll back if necessary. Logs and reporting are available. RMM in combination with a NOC (Network Operations Center) will perform regression testing to proactively prevent deploying unstable patches.
Scripting and deployment – via automation of tasks enables the service provider to be more efficient by managing changes to customer end points when required. For example, a profile created at a service organization level is available for all customers and sites within that organization. A profile created at the customer level is available to that customer only.
Service Templates – are used to group and configure RMM services to monitor devices. Service templates also provide efficient and effective workflows to group similar services that can be applied to existing and newly discovered end points. The templates save time by providing a quick way to apply standard monitoring and data analysis across all end points. Templates can be customized.
Take Control – is a feature of the tool whereby the service provider gains access to the end point remotely as if onsite. This enables swift and remote access to the end point which can be in combination with a live person on the other end if necessary or unattended access. Many features are available to gather information, make changes when indicated and agreed, and even reboot the device. This is a secure connection.
Logging – is ongoing and therefore reporting is available.
Monthly reports – are the usual frequency for the customer.
Other – many more options, features and benefits are available.
Bottom Line
To maintain infrastructure health, ensure you are working with an effective RMM tool. AKAVEIL Technologies has carefully selected and is an expert in the use of its RMM tool. We welcome in house IT professionals to contact us for further information and a demo of the RMM.
We have multiple options and plans available. We can partner together to use our RMM tool and NOC as an extension of your current capabilities. If you do not have any in house IT team, please contact us to perform the complete set of comprehensive services for you.
Remember, the stronger your defense (RMM) the healthier your infrastructure and therefore your business!
AKAVEIL offers Infrastructure Management Services and plans AKA-Starter, AKA-Plus, AKA-Elite