Top 7 Areas To Monitor For Making A Robust Application

Following are the major areas which should be monitored continuously for making a reliable, robust quality application having a glitch-free user experience:

1. System/Server Monitoring
   
   It is very necessary to monitor server's system resources like CPU Usage, Memory Consumption, I/O operations, Network, Disk Usage, Process etc as it helps understanding server's system resource usage which in turn can help you better your capacity planning and provide a better end-user experience. It can help you in deciding how many servers you need to have in a cluster to support required load.
   
   
2. Infrastructure Monitoring
   
   The hardware, software, network resources, services, databases, etc. compositely constitute the IT infrastructure of any business, which is essential for management and operations. This should look out for security breaches, unauthorized access and should provide deep insights into the operational analytics of an organization. It should be able to establish a correlation between the business operations and IT processes.
   
   
3. Functional Monitoring
   
   Functional Monitoring ensures that the purpose of the application is fulfilled without any malfunctioning. It includes unit testing while creating a new functionality, regression testing of the existing application on addition of a new functionality, checking inter-operability of all the components of the application and testing integration with the third party tools. It helps in monitoring that each function of the application adheres to the requirement specification of the application.
   
   
4. Transactional Monitoring
   
   A continuous monitoring of transactions is needed in order to find out any risk with leakage of confidential data. It should help you monitor, diagnose, notify and get detailed report of your website's online services. This also ensures that your website have better response time and good transactional user experience.
   
   
5. Database Monitoring
   
   Database is a critical component of the information technology infrastructure of business houses. Database Monitoring is the process of assessing the availability, performance and functionality of the database. It should provide extensive information so that necessary steps can be taken before break down of vital business processes.
   
   
6. Network Monitoring
   
   Network keeps all the systems within an organization and outside resources connected. Network Monitoring is the process of assessing the performance of the network for various network parameters like the processor (CPU) utilization of hosts, the network bandwidth utilization of links etc. It should also be able to detect outages and slowdowns in the system and should notify the administrator or the person in charge of the problem through SMS, email, call or other alerting mechanism so that appropriate steps can be taken.
   
   
7. Cluster Monitoring
   
   Clusters are established on various nodes which communicate among themselves for effective working. There can just be clusters on various nodes or a combination of clusters. With the growing need of clusters to offer reliable and fast performance, the need for its monitoring comes handy. Cluster Monitoring is the process of assessing the performance of cluster entities either as individual nodes or as a collection. It can be done over a cluster of nodes or over cluster of clusters.

Steve Young is a software developer working at AppPerfect Corporation [http://www.appperfect.com], a software development company based in Cupertino-US, renowned for its monitoring and testing softwares and providing robust and cost-effective custom software development services.

Source: http://www.appperfect.com/services/operations-and-monitoring/index.php