Definitive Guide to Creating Unified IT Monitoring and Management in Your Environment

Creating Unified IT Monitoring and Management in Your Environment Don Jones sponsored by Creating Unified IT Monitoring and Management in Your Environment          Don Jones    Introduction to Realtime Publishers  by Don Jones, Series Editor For several years now, Realtime has produced dozens and dozens of high‐quality books  that just happen to be delivered in electronic format—at no cost to you, the reader. We’ve  made this unique publishing model work through the generous support and cooperation of  our sponsors, who agree to bear each book’s production expenses for the benefit of our  readers.  Although we’ve always offered our publications to you for free, don’t think for a moment  that quality is anything less than our top priority. My job is to make sure that our books are  as good as—and in most cases better than—any printed book that would cost you $40 or  more. Our electronic publishing model offers several advantages over printed books: You  receive chapters literally as fast as our authors produce them (hence the “realtime” aspect  of our model), and we can update chapters to reflect the latest changes in technology.  I want to point out that our books are by no means paid advertisements or white papers.  We’re an independent publishing company, and an important aspect of my job is to make  sure that our authors are free to voice their expertise and opinions without reservation or  restriction. We maintain complete editorial control of our publications, and I’m proud that  we’ve produced so many quality books over the past years.  I want to extend an invitation to visit us at http://nexus.realtimepublishers.com, especially  if you’ve received this publication from a friend or colleague. We have a wide variety of  additional books on a range of topics, and you’re sure to find something that’s of interest to  you—and it won’t cost you a thing. We hope you’ll continue to come to Realtime for your  educational needs far into the future.  Until then, enjoy.  Don Jones    i Creating Unified IT Monitoring and Management in Your Environment          Don Jones    Introduction to Realtime Publishers ................................................................................................................. i  Chapter 1: Managing Your IT Environment: Four Things You’re Doing Wrong ........................... 1  IT Management: How We Got to Where We Are Today ..................................................................... 1  . Problem 1: You’re Managing IT in Silos ..................................................................................................... 3  Problem 2: You Aren’t Connecting Your Users, Service Desk, and IT Management ............... 6  Problem 3:  You’re Measuring the Wrong Things ................................................................................. 8  Problem 4:  You’re Losing Knowledge..................................................................................................... 12  How Truly Unified Management Can Fix the Problems ................................................................... 13  Summary .............................................................................................................................................................. 14      ii Creating Unified IT Monitoring and Management in Your Environment          Don Jones    Copyright Statement © 2011 Realtime Publishers. All rights reserved. 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If you have any questions about these terms, or if you would like information about licensing materials from Realtime Publishers, please contact us via e-mail at info@realtimepublishers.com.   iii Creating Unified IT Monitoring and Management in Your Environment          Don Jones    Chapter 1: Managing Your IT Environment:  Four Things You’re Doing Wrong  At the very start of the IT industry, “monitoring” meant having a guy wander around inside  the mainframe looking for burnt‐out vacuum tubes. There wasn’t really a way to locate the  tubes that were working a bit harder than they were designed for, so monitoring—such as  it was—was an entirely reactive affair.  In those days, the “Help desk” was probably that same guy answering the phone when one  of the other dozen or so “computer people” needed a hand feeding punch cards into a  hopper, tracking down a burnt‐out tube, and so on. The concepts of tickets, knowledge  bases, service level agreements (SLAs), and so forth hadn’t yet been invented.  IT management has certainly evolved since those days, but it unfortunately hasn’t evolved  as much as it could or should have. Our tools have definitely become more complex and  more mature, but the way in which we use those tools—our IT management processes— are in some ways still stuck in the days of reactive tube‐changing.  Some of the philosophies that underpin many organizations’ IT management practices are  really becoming a detriment to the organizations that IT is meant to support. The  discussion in this chapter will revolve around several core themes, which will continue to  drive the subsequent chapters in this book. The goal will be to help change your thinking  about how IT management—particularly monitoring—should work, what value it should  provide to your organization, and how you should go about building a better‐managed IT  environment.  IT Management: How We Got to Where We Are Today  In the earliest days of IT, we dealt with fairly straightforward systems. Even simplistic, by  today’s standards. The IT team often consisted of people who could fix any of the problems  that arose, simply because there weren’t all that many “moving parts.” It’s as if IT was a car:  A machine capable of complexity and of doing many different things, but perfectly  comprehendible, in its entirety, by a single human being.