Cloud service monitoring is an inherently tricky beast. That’s mostly down to the dynamic nature of cloud infrastructures and the complexity of shipping vast amounts of data over distributed systems. The cloud might be scalable, flexible, and all-round amazing, but it’s complicated too! And if your cloud monitoring isn’t up to snuff, you could be compromising the performance and security of your entire network.
Cloud monitoring tools need to be scalable, able to flex up or down depending on server load. They need to be heterogeneous (in other words, compatible), seamlessly integrating with multiple infrastructure components, services, platforms, protocols and APIs. They need to provide constant visibility over complex network architectures, giving your sysadmins a usable, practical dashboard.
Let’s run through some of the common cloud service monitoring challenges, and how to overcome them.
What is cloud service monitoring?
Sysadmins understand cloud monitoring all too well, but for the business owners and marketing managers out there, cloud service monitoring is simply how you measure and observe your cloud-based environment. It’s your eyes and ears: a continuous overview of cloud-based services, resources, infrastructure, and security threats.
Cloud monitoring generally involves a bunch of different metrics and performance indicators, including CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O, network traffic, latency and error rates. It’s basically how you make sure your cloud environment is actually working.
Dynamic resource allocation
Challenge. How do you manage cloud monitoring resources to meet fluctuating demand and server load, while at the same time minimizing costs and ensuring optimal performance? This is your classic ‘bang for your buck’ challenge.
Solution. Organizations should implement auto-scaling to scale monitoring services dynamically in response to demand spikes. Predictive analysis can help with this. Elastic load balancing is also a good idea, distributing incoming traffic based on server health and capacity.
Integrating on-premise and cloud monitoring tools
Challenge. Reconciling data silos, network connectivity and security, so that on-premise and cloud-based monitoring systems can actually talk to one another. The differences in architecture, data formats and connectivity make this quite tricky.
Solution. It’s a good idea to deploy a unified monitoring platform that supports both on-premise and cloud environments. These usually have built-in connectors, adapters and APIs to sync with diverse monitoring tools. You should also look into data integration middleware, like message brokers and popular ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools.
Dealing with multi-cloud environments
Challenge. With each cloud platform having its own APIs, tools and data formats, it can be tricky to coordinate cloud service monitoring and get everything on the same page. This is what makes multi-cloud environments a headache for sysadmins.
Solution. Again, finding a unified monitoring platform that supports multi-cloud environments will help a lot. You should also look at cloud-agnostic monitoring tools that offer standardized APIs and data formats. Lastly, establish some consistent metrics and monitoring policies, to make sure you’re comparing apples with apples across different cloud environments.
Security of cloud monitoring
Challenge. Cloud monitoring services collect and store sensitive data, and they need protection from unauthorized modification or tampering just like anything else. They’re also susceptible to software bugs, misconfigurations, and insecure dependencies.
Solution. Your monitoring tools should feature the same robust security protocols as the rest of your cloud environment. This includes stuff like end-to-end encryption, user access controls (including Role-Based Access Control and least privilege principles), as well as continuous monitoring and incident response training.
Cost management and optimization
Challenge. Lack of visibility into monitoring costs, and effectively scaling your costs around your infrastructure. Cloud providers often charge for things like alerting and notification services, auto-scaling, data ingestion and storage, which means monitoring costs can quickly balloon out of control.
Solution. You should be implementing cost monitoring and analysis tools, to track your cloud monitoring spend and identify any dollar-saving opportunities. It’s also a good idea to implement data-retention policies, so you’re only storing (and paying for) the data you actually need. Don’t be the sysadmin equivalent of the person who saves bits of string in case they come in handy one day.
Latency and performance bottlenecks
Challenge. So your monitoring tools have picked up increased network latency and heavy CPU usage? This can be influenced by a bunch of factors, including data volumes, application architecture and even geographic location.
Solution. Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to reduce latency and improve content delivery by caching content closer to your end users (see ‘edge cloud architecture’ for more info on this topic). You can also try load balancing and scaling, along with optimizing your data access patterns.
Ensuring data integrity and accuracy
Challenge. Making sure all the data you’re pulling from various formats, sources, platforms and APIs is consistent. You also need to block out any outliers or ‘data noise’ that will skew your monitoring. Don’t forget security too: compromised data is useless data.
Solution. Organizations should implement robust data validation and verification mechanisms – like schema validation, format validation and range checking – to make sure all monitoring data is accurate and consistent. Real-time alerts can also help detect data anomalies and deviations (before they become major headaches).
Cloud-native monitoring tools
Challenge. Cloud-native monitoring tools integrate with cloud platforms and scale dynamically with your cloud environment. Third party tools, on the other hand, offer more comprehensive monitoring capabilities, custom dashboards and greater flexibility. So which should you choose?
Solution. There’s no ‘right’ answer here. You need to assess your monitoring requirements, your supported cloud platforms, your scalability needs and the integration effort needed to get third-party tools up and running. Weigh all this against the cost of both options, and see which one suits your organization best.
Adapting to new technologies
Challenge. Cloud service monitoring comes with a learning curve, just like anything else. And integrating new cloud monitoring tech with existing systems, processes and workflows can get pretty messy. Don’t even get us started on data onboarding…
Solution. No shortcuts here: your staff need comprehensive training and education programs, both for IT and end users. Try pilot deployments and proof of concepts (POCs) to evaluate new cloud monitoring tools in real-world scenarios before full-scale deployment. Remember: there’s no such thing as too much practice.
