Cloud Monitoring: How to Evaluate Your Cloud’s Performance

How do you know when your cloud environment is performing optimally? Many businesses use the cloud in some capacity today, with a sizable amount operating multiple clouds at once. Despite the widespread adoption of the cloud, most enterprises aren’t fully equipped to evaluate their performance. According to research by Ixia, only 15% of enterprises using public cloud environments properly monitor them. Cloud monitoring is an important part of using cloud deployments, but unfortunately, not enough companies implement it properly.

Cloud monitoring refers to tools and services to observe the operation and performance of a cloud environment. Without full visibility or performance data, however, cloud users aren’t able to monitor their cloud environments efficiently. Below, we’ve outlined the basics of cloud monitoring and why it’s important for enterprises.

What does cloud monitoring evaluate?

Monitoring the cloud encompasses a variety of performance metrics and analytics. The monitoring capabilities can observe several cloud functions in order to give users insights into their cloud environment. Features that a monitoring service can evaluate includes, but is not limited to:

Cloud speed

To work effectively for enterprises, their cloud environments needs to operate quickly. Monitoring tools can examine the speeds of downloading resources from the cloud, as well as latency and dropped packets when running cloud-based applications.

Security

Securing the cloud is important for both providers and users. Cloud providers monitor their environment for harmful actors or security gaps, performing penetration tests and dispatching security fixes.

Application performance

Cloud-based applications can drain a lot of the cloud’s resources while in use. Monitoring tools inform the provider and user to any application performance errors.

Who monitors the cloud?

Depending on the cloud deployment, the responsibility for monitoring might fall on a specific party. Public cloud providers usually handle monitoring themselves, implementing automated services to continuously check on their cloud environment. However, for private cloud deployments, it may be up to the user to monitor the cloud. When you enter into an agreement with a cloud provider, check the service level agreement (SLA) for any mention of cloud monitoring capabilities. The provider should inform you if they monitor their cloud, including every method they use to do so.

Why is cloud monitoring important?

As we stated above, most enterprise cloud users aren’t effectively monitoring their cloud environment. Commonly cited reasons include a lack of data gathered by users and poor monitoring practices. Clearly, there is a need for cloud users to understand why monitoring a cloud environment is so important.

Cloud monitors collect data from every point of the cloud’s infrastructure, allowing providers and users to maintain full visibility into their cloud. This will also alert them to any performance or security blindspots that could be negatively affecting their cloud operations. Monitoring tools allow users to examine their cloud’s performance and increase their uptime. By implementing a monitoring strategy, users gain insights into their cloud behavior that is critical for establishing efficient cloud practices going forward.

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