Key strategies and best practices for remote infrastructure management

Many employees have experienced a boost in their productivity and well-being due to the shift towards remote work, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. But this trend has also led to an expanded attack surface for cybercriminals and a greater need for cloud-based services and virtual private networks (VPNs). Developers working with remote IT infrastructures face more pressure than ever to bolster security measures, ramp up network capacity, and allocate resources flexibly.

Remote infrastructure management (RIM) is vital to support dispersed workforces, enabling remote overview and troubleshooting of IT assets. However, RIM comes with significant challenges. They must seamlessly integrate with existing systems without compromising security. They must also navigate complex IT environments, adapt to different technologies, and comply with stringent privacy regulations—all while ensuring minimal downtime and optimizing resource use.

This article provides an overview of RIM and its challenges, its role in boosting operational efficiency, and some best practices to follow when you implement RIM in your workflow.

Understanding remote infrastructure management

Managing infrastructure effectively without physical proximity is vital as more organizations seek seamless operations across locations. By remotely overseeing and maintaining your organization’s IT infrastructure—including networks, servers, and devices—RIM addresses key challenges often found in remote contexts, such as visibility, security, and performance monitoring.

Without a RIM solution, organizations may miss critical insights, face security gaps, and experience operational inefficiencies. This highlights the importance of integrating advanced monitoring tools to maintain a robust and secure IT infrastructure.

Let’s examine the challenges when integrating RIM into your working environment.

Challenges in remote infrastructure management

Managing infrastructure remotely can present these key concerns:

• Ensuring stable connectivity — This involves overcoming latency problems and bandwidth limitations, and bolstering the reliability of remote connections.
• Monitoring system performance — This requires navigating diverse hardware configurations and software environments.
• Maintaining robust security — This necessitates implementing consistent security protocols, access controls, and threat detection mechanisms.

These challenges compound as organizations must diagnose and resolve issues without physical access. The solution lies in RIM tools that offer deep visibility, real-time alerts, and comprehensive analytics—these ensure operational continuity, safeguard data, and optimize performance across the remote infrastructure.

A robust monitoring system should also come with a dashboard that allows you to check system status at a glance, respond to alerts for potential issues, analyze trends for optimization, and proactively implement security measures against threats.

How remote infrastructure management works

RIM platforms offer deep insights into your remote work infrastructure, enhancing your oversight across distributed environments. Working with RIM tools allows for preventive actions and rapid responses, which help you maintain uninterrupted operations.

For example, you might utilize your RIM platform to check Amazon Web Service (AWS) Workspaces—ensuring cloud services are up and running smoothly for remote workers. Tools like Site24x7 use AI-driven monitoring to gather performance metrics and metadata on an array of AWS resources.

Your RIM platform may also have an On-Premise Poller keeping an eye on internal network health, which is crucial for in-house operations and remote access. On-Premise Pollers can monitor diverse components, including data center elements, intranet applications like blogs, payroll systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, network devices, and database servers. They also offer flexibility—you can install them across branch offices, which enables comprehensive monitoring of user experiences across each branch.

VPNs are crucial for business continuity, allowing employees to work from home while safely connected to their corporate environment. RIM tools enable you to run regular VPN connectivity checks to ensure secure and stable remote access.

PING and PORT monitoring are crucial RIM features essential for network reliability and application performance in a remote environment. By continuously checking the availability of network components and verifying that critical applications are accessible through their respective ports, these tools provide immediate alerts on connectivity issues or downtime. You can quickly address and resolve problems, ensuring minimal disruption to business operations and maintaining a seamless user experience.

Enhancing operational efficiency with RIM

Beyond safeguarding against interruptions and cyber attacks, your RIM platform can also optimize remote teams’ workflows through device monitoring, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and an advanced alerts system.

Device monitoring

Device monitoring offers comprehensive network oversight, tracking various devices essential to remote workers, like routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, printers, and data storage. The feature provides real-time availability statistics through one-minute status polls while performance counters help monitor network performance.

RIM platform dashboards can also provide targeted insight into your devices’ performance and health, giving you a detailed understanding of network status and facilitating proactive management.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

SNMP is a well-known internet standard for monitoring and managing IP-connected network devices. It facilitates seamless communication between remote devices, such as servers, routers, and firewalls. RIM platforms use this protocol to collect and organize data, making it easier for you to identify and isolate faults across your network promptly.

The protocol offers vital advantages for remote work environments, enabling real-time monitoring and proactive issue resolution. SNMP’s user-friendly features, including remote configuration and security monitoring, enhance the adaptability and security of remote networks, contributing to optimized performance and reliability in distributed work settings.

Advanced alerts

An advanced alerts system like Alarms view streamlines remote monitoring by grouping alerts based on monitor name and severity, offering a clear overview of issues. A prime advantage for developers is getting a comprehensive snapshot of critical alarms, facilitating efficient tracking and resolution.

Your RIM platform’s alerts system should provide both flexibility and accuracy. It should stay on top of your system’s current status while keeping track of trends in the past 24 hours. When you resolve an issue, it should update the system automatically.

A common concern among developers is receiving too many alerts. An effective alerts system offers customizable filters to prioritize and manage alerts effectively. Furthermore, you can temporarily disable your notifications to complete your work interruption-free.

Fig.1: An overview of RIM platform monitoring capabilities

Best practices for remote infrastructure management

The best practices below help optimize your usage of tools as you integrate RIM into your workflows. Keep them in mind on your journey toward efficient operations and effectively monitoring remote IT assets.

Set up monitoring parameters

Tailor monitoring parameters to include key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your remote infrastructure, such as network latency, bandwidth usage, and server response times.

You can also establish appropriate intervals for data collection to strike a balance between real-time updates and minimizing resource consumption. This ensures timely data without overwhelming the network.

Customize alert thresholds

Customization of alerts begins with identifying critical thresholds. Define baseline values and acceptable ranges for each monitored system metric, indicating what’s considered normal behavior for the remote infrastructure. The system should only trigger alerts when its behavior crosses predefined thresholds or specific events occur.

Additionally, to avoid alert fatigue, define a clear hierarchy for alerts to escalate notifications appropriately based on severity.

Leverage analytics

Analytics are a powerful tool to drive smart organizational decision-making. While up-to-date information is crucial for smooth operations, historical data proves extremely helpful. Analyzing trends and patterns from older data can aid you in improving future performance.

In the same vein, consider implementing predictive analytics. This helps you foresee potential issues and proactively address them.

Conclusion

Effective infrastructure management is paramount as remote work maintains its popularity. Monitoring tools provide real-time visibility into network performance, detect security vulnerabilities, and optimize cloud resources for cost and performance.

Want to invest in your operational efficiency and reliability? Site24x7 offers a unified, cloud-based platform to monitor every aspect of your remote IT infrastructure. Sign up for a free 30-day trial to experience its benefits firsthand, optimizing your business for the remote work era.