Cloud Monitoring

What is Cloud Monitoring?

Cloud monitoring is tracking the performance and usage of cloud-based resources like servers, storage and networks. It allows organizations to ensure the availability and performance of their cloud-based systems, identify and troubleshoot issues and optimize usage.  

Additionally, cloud monitoring can also provide valuable insights into usage patterns which can help enterprises make informed investment or resourcing decisions about scaling cloud infrastructure. Overall, cloud monitoring helps companies ensure the reliability, performance, and security of their cloud-based systems which can help them achieve business goals. 

What are the benefits of cloud monitoring?

Cloud monitoring offers benefits such as increased visibility that can enable scalability, improved performance, and seamless automation. Monitoring in the cloud provides a central view of cloud resources, making it more efficient to identify and troubleshoot previously undetected issues. By having monitoring in one place, your team can automatically scale up or down usage based on your application’s unique needs, eliminating the need for manual intervention or adjustments. Integrating cloud monitoring software with the automation tools your team already uses enables just in time response to critical scenarios and to scale-up resources when demand increases. Plus, with continuous cloud monitoring you can get a view into real-time performance metrics, allowing you to identify and resolve performance issues before they become a larger problem.

How do enterprises adopt cloud monitoring?

There are 10 core best practices companies should follow for cloud server monitoring: 

1. Set transparent monitoring KPIs. Benchmarking metrics, defining and establishing cloud monitoring goals is key before you measure the performance and availability of your cloud environment.  

2. Buy vs. build. Consider third party monitoring solutions since they are often cheaper than building monitoring tools in-house.  

3. End to end optics. Monitor both the infrastructure and application layers to ensure E-to-E visibility.  

4. 24/7 monitoring. Continuous monitoring is key to optimizing your cloud infrastructure to ensure it aligns with your changing business objectives.  

5. Invest in team training. Empower your team with the necessary skills and tools to effectively monitor your cloud environment.  

6. Develop a proactive alert strategy. To quickly detect and respond to potential issues, set up automated alerts, team notifications and escalation routing workflows.  

7. Implement security monitoring. To detect and prevent potential threats to your cloud environment, it’s best to align cloud service monitoring measures with processes that ladder up to CISO, CIO and CTO security policies and procedures. Additionally, you can identify security threats and vulnerabilities to take appropriate action to prevent data breaches.  

8. Test frequently. By testing your monitoring and response procedures on a regular basis you can ensure they work as intended in the event of an actual incident. 

9. Increase cost optimization. Cloud monitoring services can save your company money and free up team resources to work on more innovative or strategic initiatives. Additionally, it can help you identify and eliminate underutilized resources, which can help money on cloud bill inflation.  

10. Hold regular review cadences. Set up regular calendar meetings on a monthly or quarterly basis to review and analyze monitoring data reports to identify trends, strengths, weaknesses and potential areas for improvement. 

How does Azul help with cloud monitoring?

Azul’s product suite delivers many of the benefits associated with cloud monitoring. Azul Platform Prime helps optimize cloud resources and can lower cloud costs by up to 50%. Faster code = less compute = a smaller cloud bill, all while enabling efficient resource utilization and better application performance.  

For security, Azul Vulnerability Detection goes beyond traditional SaaS cloud monitoring to monitor vulnerabilities running in production to eliminate false positives and improve result accuracy. Discover how Azul Vulnerability Detection is a feature of Azul Intelligence Cloud that allows users to continuously monitor their Java applications to detect known vulnerabilities in production.