Your IT infrastructure runs on servers, which makes them vital to the performance of your entire IT environment. therefore, it is essential to monitor your servers to ensure there isn't any disruption in performance and uptime.

Servers are devices or applications that can store, process and deploy resources to other devices, applications or users. 

Now that you know how important servers are to an IT environment, what happens if a server stops working?

When a server is down, it can lead to many problems. Downtime can prove to be costly for a company, potentially resulting in financial and reputational damage. But that's where server monitoring software can help. Server monitoring software is used to ensure that the server and all devices on the network are running optimally.

What is server monitoring?

Server monitoring is defined as providing a complete overview of the status of your servers, including all processes, status and other variables.

To put that into perspective, a server can be a physical device or a virtual server that shares a physical device with multiple other servers — and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Application servers, client servers, mail servers and database servers are some of the more commonly used server types you can find today.

What does server management mean?

Server management is a broad term that can cover a wide range of functions specific to an organization and the kinds of servers it operates. Ultimately, the goal of both server monitoring and management is to ensure that servers are operating at their peak performance capacity and to prevent or reduce any potential downtime.

Typically, server monitoring and management software allow administrators to monitor networks, install software updates, add new devices and equipment to the network, and troubleshoot.

What is the importance of server monitoring and management?

Most businesses in 2021 are highly dependent on their IT infrastructure at some level to run successfully — and servers are at the heart of IT infrastructures.

Server downtime can hurt the entire IT infrastructure since programs cannot run as usual. This disrupts the seamless interaction between the IT environment and the user, leading to user, and ultimately, customer dissatisfaction.

Server monitoring can help ensure that servers are always functioning at peak capability. It can also allow a sysadmin to identify potential issues before they occur. This allows them to take proactive action and avert downtime. That's why it's critical to monitor your servers and ensure your users have a hassle-free experience.

How Pulseway's server monitoring and management software can help you

Pulseway was recently featured as one of GetApp's category leaders in server monitoring for 2021 based on user reviews from last year. Our category-leading server monitoring and management software enables administrators to monitor and manage their server's performance and uptime from anywhere, at any time. In addition, it also offers insights into the real-time status of Active Directory, IIS, SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, VMware, Hyper-V and more.

In addition to getting real-time visibility of the physical status of your servers, here's what else you can do with Pulseway in your arsenal:

• Seamlessly manage Microsoft Active Directory domain services: Pulseway integrates with Active Directory deployment without the need for any configuration or infrastructure changes. Once integrated, you can access the entire Active Directory Forest, allow new domains to get automatically picked, get notified when a user gets locked out, enable, disable or reset passwords, and manage a user's group membership to add or remove security features.
• Take control of your virtual infrastructure: Pulseway's Hyper-V server module mobilizes Microsoft Hyper-V management tools, allowing you to take swift action without being present in front of a computer. You can monitor your virtual infrastructure, send commands and track execution, send replication commands and watch virtual machines' screens in real time.
• Effortlessly monitor VMware vSphere infrastructure: All you need to do is glance over the real-time status of hypervisors and virtual machines to get all the insight you need. Monitor your virtual cloud securely without firewall rules, expensive VPN connections or complex proxies. With the VMware integration, you can manage vCenter and ESXi hypervisors, revert snapshots or create new ones, receive vCenter alarms, manage virtual machines, watch virtual machine live console feeds and view system logs in real time.
• Simplify Microsoft SQL server management: With Pulseway Server Monitoring Software, you can view table data, execute queries, view logs and much more. This means you can easily identify slow-running SQL queries, gain complete server visibility and do it all from one single dashboard.
• Take full control of XenServer monitoring: Take advantage of Pulseway's seamless integration with Citrix XenServer and monitor the health and status of multiple virtualized environments and make use of features such as vApps, Snapshots and much more. Once integrated, you can monitor memory usage, run and pause tasks on the go, take snapshots and monitor CPU usage from a single dashboard.
• Monitor and control Microsoft Exchange: Connect Pulseway to one server and gain access to all servers in the Database Availability Group (DAG). Receive notifications when databases get mounted or dismounted, control replication queues and set limits. Put your mind at ease knowing that mailboxes are under control and you can prevent issues before your users even notice them.

Always stay on top of your servers to ensure minimized downtime with Pulseway's server monitoring and management software. Try Pulseway now!