‘Monitoring Issues and a General Framework
Most monitoring platforms suffer from two primary problems:
• The systems being monitored were not designed to be monitored.
• The approach to monitoring is bottom up rather than top down and misses the critical question “Is there a problem affecting customers right now?”
Solving these problems is relatively easy:
• Designing your systems to be monitored before implementation.
• Developing monitors to first answer the question “Is there a problem?” These are typically business metric and customer experience monitors.
• Developing monitors to next answer “Where is the problem?” These are typically systems level monitors.
• When completed with the first two questions, developing monitors to answer the question “What is the problem?” Often, these are monitors that you build into your application consistent with your design principles.
It is very important to follow the steps in order, from top down, to develop a world-class monitoring solution.’
—Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott, The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise.
