Best practices for a fail-safe IT infrastructure strategy

IT infrastructures are constantly evolving, meaning conventional management processes have become outdated and inadequate to tackle complex IT issues. A study by ESG found that 75% of IT decision-makers admit that complexity of IT infrastructures has increased drastically from two years ago.

This rapid surge in complexity has disrupted admins’ understanding of network behavior and decreased the chances of foreseeing unanticipated network issues. This can negatively affect the performance of a network and its uptime. This is why modern IT infrastructure management is vital for IT infrastructure managers, because it helps in averting network-related mishaps.

Importance of IT infrastructure management

Manual management results in IT admins focusing only on critical issues. In these instances, minor issues like performance drops or an unexpected spikes in temperature can slip by unnoticed and could degrade the performance of the network.

Fortunately, a well-structured IT infrastructure management strategy can help in resolving this, as it provides granular visibility into the network and lets admins spot minor errors effortlessly. With the right plan in place, admins will know what tools they need to equip themselves for efficient, unified management, minimizing the chances of device failures and network outages and helping business owners save a lot of resources. It also helps them provide seamless, on-time service to end clients.

Best practices of IT infrastructure management

Optimal performance of hardware, software, services, and other infrastructure components and keeping the network up and running round the clock are both crucial pieces of the puzzle. Here are few best practices that can help you achieve them.

  • Proactively monitor your IT infrastructure with visualization tools

    Instantly reacting to network issues and resolving them after they occur is not enough to prevent unplanned outages. Frequent network outages can ruin business growth and drive customers away, making it difficult for business owners to rebuild the brand.

    To effectively increase network uptime, proactive infrastructure monitoring has now become a staple technique. You need to oversee the IT infrastructure using powerful visualization tools like real-time dashboards and maps. Identify, locate, and stem critical network errors at the earliest stages before they escalate and cause potential network downtime.

  • Automate basic, repetitive operations

    As network components in IT infrastructures grow in number, performing repetitive maintenance tasks and troubleshooting measures like executing a script manually is wasted labor. Automating all possible basic L1 and L2 operations can help IT admins remediate errors rapidly and it also reduces their workload. This ensures minimal mean time to repair and no SLA violations, which plays a major role in the growth of business development.

  • Integrate with ITSM tools for streamlined fault management

    When a network alert is raised, technicians need to fully comprehend the underlying issue before they act on it. Integrating with the right ITSM tool can help your team troubleshoot errors more quickly. ITSM tools send explicit alerts to the concerned technicians and teams when an issue occurs and helps them get to the bottom of the issue in no time. This way, admins can fix the issues effortlessly and boost the performance of the network.

  • Leverage reports for forecasting and analyzing

    Unanticipated network issues can lead to network outages, costing a fortune for business owners. Reports provide deep insights into the details of your IT infrastructure, which helps admins analyze trends, predict potential device failures, and fix them ahead of time. This approach reduces network downtime and prevents any financial loss incurred by it.

Upgrade your IT infrastructure management game with OpManager Plus

OpManager Plus is a holistic, easy-to-use IT infrastructure management solution built to facilitate effortless, real-time monitoring and granular management of network resources. With its advanced, out-of-the box features, your admins can track, manage, and plan a strategy to prolong the uptime of the network and utilize your IT resources to their fullest extent.

OpManager Plus offers:

  • Support for over 10,000 devices and over 2,000 performance metrics for a meticulous IT infrastructure management experience.

  • In-depth visibility into the IT infrastructure with its powerful visualization tools.

  • IT workflow automation, which makes maintenance tasks and basic troubleshooting operations effortless.

  • Efficient bandwidth and traffic management, which provides visibility into critical metrics like performance and consumption to help with analysis and forecasting.

  • Advanced network configuration management to automate configuration backup and detect unauthorized changes made in network devices.

  • Hassle-free firewall management to detect security breaches and to keep an eye on firewall rule changes.

Want to learn more about ManageEngine OpManager Plus’ reliable features? Try our free, 30-day trial for a hands-on experience or request a personalized demo.

Technicians can streamline IP address management with ManageEngine OpUtils. They can seamlessly scan, track, and monitor IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Enable support for managing multiple subnets and supernets, and automate IP space management tasks. Along with that, OpUtils simplifies switch port management by scanning the switches in a network rapidly and gaining detailed visibility into IPs, MAC addresses, statuses, and more. It also helps technicians effortlessly discover devices that are plugged in to the network’s ports.