Server monitoring and alerting. Server monitoring and alerting are essential for the overall upkeep of your IT systems, especially today with the growth of remote work. In this video, we'll walk you through the basics of server monitoring and alerting, and share some best practices to keep in mind when setting up your monitoring system. Before we begin, be sure to subscribe to Ninja one's IT Video Hub for more tech content like this. What is server monitoring and alerting? Server monitoring is the process of gathering and analyzing metrics such as server performance, health, and availability. Regular server monitoring allows you to track metrics, events and logs, and real time keeping your IT infrastructure in good condition. Server alerting makes monitoring easier. When a specified metric meets certain conditions. Notifications can be sent to designated individuals. These alerts can be used to flag issues and immediately address them. Monitoring is particularly helpful for large organizations that require a centralized approach to infrastructure management. What should you be monitoring? There are two key metrics that organizations should monitor. Events and logs. Event data refers to the what, where, and when of a server incident. This information is crucial for troubleshooting, especially when correlated with other metrics. Logs give more context surrounding an issue they serve as a digital paper trail. That details what applications and services were open at the time as well as which users were active. Setting up server monitoring protocols means you don't have to manually log all network traffic. Server monitoring best practices before we wrap up. Here are five best practices to keep in mind when conducting server monitoring. Monitor both underlying system components and the system in itself. This will give you a better idea of how your IT infrastructure works. Set alert thresholds. These thresholds will depend on the base performance of each application. Establish protocols for deploying new services or infrastructure. Make sure you can monitor them properly before officially deploying it to users. Include any third party services in the monitoring process. If your business uses cloud services or vendor risk management tools, for example, make sure to check these as well. After all third party services are also susceptible to issues, regularly evaluate your monitoring strategy. This is to ensure it stays effective and so that you can make updates as needed. These practices can be adapted to businesses of any size. When creating a server monitoring and alerting system, it's important to take into consideration the needs and uses of your IT environment. That said, some good features you should look for are R mm, software compatibility, patch management, and SI log notification monitoring. For more information, check out our official blog posts linked in the description below.