Alexis Kestler
Server monitoring is a critical activity for any online business. With more companies adopting cloud infrastructure, cloud-based monitoring has become the preferred approach for gaining complete visibility into cloud servers.
For small and medium businesses (SMBs), using a SaaS monitoring solution offers several advantages compared to traditional on-premises tools. As a fellow tech enthusiast, let me walk you through the key benefits and some of the best options out there.
Why Cloud Monitoring Makes Sense for Small Businesses
Migrating server monitoring to the cloud brings these major benefits for SMBs:
Flexible Scaling
Cloud monitoring services are available in different plans and can scale up or down easily based on your infrastructure size and growth. This saves you from investing in on-premises hardware and software upfront.
Access from Anywhere
Cloud dashboards can be accessed from any device, anywhere, enabling your team to collaborate and respond faster to incidents. Integrations with services like Slack further improve flexibility.
Cost Savings
Public cloud monitoring services are cheaper to use than buying and maintaining your own monitoring servers and tools. You only pay for the actual resources used.
Supports Remote Teams
During the pandemic, businesses saw the benefits of remote work. Cloud monitoring seamlessly enables remote teams to track infrastructure without on-site access.
Automated Alerting
Cloud platforms automate monitoring thresholds, checks, alerting rules etc. This saves time compared to configuring on-premises tools manually.
High Uptime
Leading cloud monitoring vendors guarantee over 99% uptime through SLAs. This means 24/7 access to dashboards and historical reporting.
According to RightScale‘s 2020 State of the Cloud Report, over 92% of SMBs now use public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. As your business leverages the cloud, using a cloud-native monitoring solution is a logical next step.
Top 5 Cloud Server Monitoring Tools for SMBs
Based on analyst research and user reviews, here are the top 5 cloud monitoring services suitable for SMBs:
1. Datadog
Datadog is a popular monitoring and analytics platform used by over 15,000 companies worldwide. It supports monitoring for servers, cloud platforms, containers, applications, networks and more.
Key capabilities include:
- Over 400 built-in integrations
- Customizable dashboards with granular visualization
- Advanced alerting with machine learning-based anomaly detection
- Distributed tracing for microservices
- Robust APIs and webhooks for integration
- Support for major cloud providers like AWS, GCP and Azure
According to Gartner, Datadog leads the IT infrastructure monitoring Magic Quadrant. Datadog is easy to try out – they offer a generous 14-day free trial.
2. Site24x7
Site24x7 by Zoho Corp offers a unified platform to monitor cloud infrastructure, websites, applications and user experience.
Key features include:
- Server monitoring for Windows, Linux and cloud servers
- Application performance monitoring with deep code-level diagnostics
- Real user monitoring from global locations
- AIOps for automated anomaly detection and root cause analysis
- Integration with PagerDuty, Slack, Zendesk and more
- Support for Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure and other platforms
Site24x7 serves over 6000 customers across 140+ countries. They offer a 30-day free trial to test out the product.
3. Paessler PRTG
Paessler PRTG is an on-premises network monitoring solution that can monitor cloud infrastructure when installed remotely. It is also available as PRTG cloud with a simplified interface.
Key features:
- Auto-discovery and mapping of IT infrastructure and devices
- Monitoring based on SNMP, packet sniffing, Netflow etc
- Alerts for connection loss, latency, bandwidth usage etc
- Easy to try – Free version monitors up to 100 sensors
- Wide range of sensors for almost any system metric
Paessler offers free trial versions and is popular with over 600,000 administrators worldwide.
4. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager provides unified monitoring for on-premise and cloud environments. It comes in two editions – Enterprise and MSP.
Key capabilities:
- Monitoring for servers, virtualization, network, applications, databases
- Dashboards with business views for different teams
- Flexible alerting based on different criteria
- Automated discovery of IT infrastructure
- Support for AWS, VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, Docker etc
- Integrations with ServiceNow, Slack, Microsoft Teams etc
Over a million admins trust OpManager for their monitoring needs. They offer a free 30-day trial to test it hands-on.
5. Nagios XI
Nagios is an open-source monitoring pioneer and Nagios XI is their commercial monitoring suite. It works for both cloud and on-premise infrastructure.
Key features:
- Monitoring for networks, servers, applications, processes, logs etc
- Powerful alerting and notification capabilities
- Customizable dashboards and detailed reporting
- Available as hardware, virtual appliance, docker container
- Over 5000 third-party plugins for extended monitoring
- Integrations with tools like Slack, PagerDuty, ServiceNow etc
Nagios XI comes with a free 30-day trial to evaluate the product.
All the above solutions are trusted by thousands of SMBs and designed to make monitoring easy and affordable. Most offer free trials – so you can conveniently find the right solution for your specific needs.
Key Considerations for SMB-friendly Monitoring
Here are some important criteria to evaluate when choosing a monitoring platform as a small business:
- Ease of deployment – Quick and painless setup with little configuration
- Automated discovery – Auto-detects devices, servers, apps to monitor
- Customizable monitoring – Flexibility to track metrics and KPIs specific to your stack
- Affordable pricing – SMB-friendly pricing, free tiers for basic needs
- Cloud integration – Supports monitoring major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP
- Alerting capabilities – Flexible notification routing to email, mobile etc
- Data retention policy – Sufficient default retention for historical troubleshooting
- Support options – Responsive technical support via tickets, chat etc
- Ease of use – Intuitive UI and workflows for your team
As an early stage startup or small business, you want to avoid complex enterprise tools with steep learning curves. Rather, choose a monitoring platform that simplifies critical tasks like agent installation, dashboard setup, alert configuration etc. This ensures your team can leverage monitoring right away to maximize uptime and service quality.
Get Started with Effective Cloud Monitoring
Migrating server monitoring to a cloud-based SaaS platform is the best approach for modern SMBs embracing cloud infrastructure and remote teams. It eliminates the costs and overheads of managing on-premises monitoring tools.
The solutions listed here are specifically tailored for SMBs. They are trusted by thousands of small businesses to monitor their critical systems cost-effectively.
Try out these monitoring tools today with their free trials. And feel free to reach out if you need any guidance on choosing the right solution for your specific environment or use case!
