What are Metrics?
Metrics are quantitative measurements to assess, compare, and track performance. This data is then used to make better decisions about whatever it is that is being measured. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is a popular quote in business management, but it’s also relevant in computing, which is why metrics are a critical component of IT and infrastructure performance management.
The Importance of Tracking the Right Metrics
In digital environments, there are a lot—often an overwhelming number—of measurable elements. But just because something is measurable doesn’t mean that it matters. You need to focus on the metrics that deliver the most relevant and useful insight to the organization. It’s also important to note that there may be some essential factors that are not easily measured with quantifiable data. In these cases, you want to look for measurable data, perhaps a combination of data points, that can act as a stand-in metrics to help you make more educated inferences about that particular factor.
Infrastructure Metrics
There are four broad categories of metrics used in infrastructure monitoring:
• Performance: Can the components in the infrastructure meet application demand and workload requirements? Is there any unacceptable latency in the environment?
• Utilization: What percent of available processing is being used to handle resource demands and workload volumes?
• Capacity: Can the infrastructure handle resource demands and workload volumes?
• Health: What is the overall condition of the infrastructure that supports the organization’s applications and workloads?
Virtana Delivers Powerful Infrastructure Metrics
VirtualWisdom enables you to continuously capture, correlate, and analyze real-time response time plus utilization, health, and capacity metrics to provide a system-wide heterogeneous view of infrastructure performance. With Virtana, you can roll up metrics to minutes, hours, or days, and even get comprehensive historical insights based on performance details over multi-year periods. Virtana auto-correlates metrics of entities impacted at the same time and auto-discovers changes in topology, giving you deeper and more accurate visibility into your infrastructure. Contact us to learn more or to book a demo.
Suggested Reading and Related Topics
• IPM Guide—Infrastructure Monitoring Metrics: Learn about the common performance, utilization, capacity, and health metrics for different resource types within an enterprise infrastructure.
• Observability: Discover how infrastructure observability can improve monitoring and management of your infrastructure.
• IPM Guide—Infrastructure Performance Monitoring: Read about IPM and how it can benefit your organization.