Editor's note

Enterprise IT deployments are increasingly complex -- as they span on-premises data centers and multiple cloud platforms -- and involve a mix of containers and microservices to support distributed application architectures.

IT ops teams must maintain visibility into these modern and dynamic architectures, and it's not enough to monitor key metrics in isolation. Instead, they need a holistic view of infrastructure resources, complete with dependency mapping, automated root cause analysis and predictive insights. These goals can be achieved with an AIOps monitoring strategy, but the technology is still maturing.

Use this guide to explore the top software, services and hardware performance-tracking challenges enterprises face today and how AIOps monitoring tools can address them.

1Challenges with modern IT monitoring tools

IT teams must carefully weigh the tradeoffs of different app and infrastructure monitoring tools, including those that maintain static vs. dynamic thresholds or those that take a reactive vs. proactive approach. Does the deployment require customized tools that can link infrastructure behavior to app performance and the end-user experience? Explore these challenges -- and more -- when it's time to select and implement IT monitoring tool sets.

2Distributed monitoring for distributed apps

Distributed applications, including those that span container, cloud and microservices architectures, introduce novel monitoring requirements -- and hurdles -- for IT operations admins and engineers. Learn how to adapt monitoring strategies to suit these distributed environments and how to ensure monitoring tools don't disrupt the very systems and workloads they're intended to track.

3The basics of AIOps

Through an ability to automate root cause analysis, correlate events and predict future trends and issues, AIOps monitoring tools can quickly become a go-to in an IT admin's toolkit. But, before adoption, admins need to get a handle on the key characteristics of AIOps initiatives and tools. Understand the prominent AIOps use cases, where they fit within a CI/CD pipeline, and the technical and organizational challenges these tools introduce.

4AIOps monitoring strategies and tools

The application of AI to an IT monitoring strategy can take many forms. AI alongside log analysis, for example, enables teams to detect potential security vulnerabilities in near-real time and with fewer false alarms. In addition, AI within monitoring tools turns raw data into actionable steps to streamline network operations.