/ˈmɒnɪtərɪŋ/
noun — "keeping an eye on your systems so they don’t quietly implode."
Monitoring in information technology is the continuous observation and measurement of systems, applications, networks, and infrastructure to ensure they operate correctly, securely, and efficiently. Monitoring helps detect anomalies, failures, performance degradation, or security issues before they impact users or operations.
Technically, Monitoring involves:
- Collecting metrics — such as CPU usage, memory consumption, latency, bandwidth, and error rates.
- Event tracking — logging critical events and system alerts for troubleshooting.
- Real-time analysis — using dashboards, alerts, and automated systems to respond promptly to issues.
- Integration — feeding data into logging, network monitoring, or anomaly detection tools for comprehensive insight.
Examples of Monitoring include:
- Watching server health and uptime using monitoring tools like Nagios or Zabbix.
- Tracking web application performance and response times to ensure optimal user experience.
- Monitoring security logs for unauthorized access attempts or suspicious activity.
Conceptually, Monitoring is the vigilant guardian of IT systems: it observes, reports, and alerts so problems can be resolved before they escalate. Effective monitoring ensures operational continuity, performance optimization, and system security.
In practice, Monitoring relies on a mix of automated tools, alerting systems, and dashboards that visualize performance metrics, combined with logging and anomaly detection for full situational awareness.
See Network Monitoring, Anomaly Detection, Logging, Performance, Alerting.