Gain deeper insight into cloud-native application performance, security, and usage
According to the Cloud Security Alliance, nearly 100% of organizations use the cloud in some form, leveraging its ability to make programs more efficient and files more accessible to a global audience. However, unless you are closely monitoring workload usage, chances are good that you’re not optimizing the security and performance of your application to its fullest potential.
Cloud monitoring tools can help. Once set up, they can automate large portions of the data gathering and reporting process, notifying you when workloads are healthy — and when they need your attention. Our guide will walk you through everything you need to know about cloud monitoring, such as best practices, developing strategies for mitigating risk, and choosing the right tool to gather data based on your desired metrics.
Cloud Monitoring: How It Works
If infrastructure monitoring is the process of collecting performance and diagnostic data from the various components that make up an application’s development and runtime environments, then cloud monitoring is the same process applied to cloud-native environments and services.
Cloud infrastructure is complex and constantly shifting. Because demands fluctuate throughout the day (and often come from a wide variety of geographical locations), cloud-native applications must be able to scale up seamlessly and then scale back down to avoid wasting resources. This demand requires container-based architecture (like Kubernetes) and numerous microservices to orchestrate these processes.
To track these shifting processes, teams will often implement various cloud network monitoring tools to automate the gathering of critical data, such as uptime, capacity, and performance. Development teams can then integrate these tools into a centralized monitoring platform, which offers a single pane of glass to view the entire health, performance, and security of the application. With this holistic view, you can detect anomalies and prevent downtime far more reliably than with a piecemeal approach.
While the specifics of cloud monitoring broadly apply to cloud-native applications, the fundamentals can be applied to all types of infrastructure monitoring, even if you haven’t made the leap to the cloud just yet. Integrating these tools offers deeper insight into your application, which makes your cloud migration much more manageable. Read our whitepaper to learn more about how automated tools like DuploCloud can speed up migration times while reducing the possibility of human error.
Read Infrastructure Monitoring Implementation: What Developers Need to Know to learn more about the basics of infrastructure monitoring.
Infrastructure Monitoring Best Practices
Whether you’re implementing hybrid cloud monitoring tools, multi cloud monitoring tools, or simply want to beef up your on premises infrastructure monitoring capabilities, the following best practices will help you define and achieve your goals.
- Define your target metrics. Every application is unique, which means appropriate performance metrics will vary. Examine application data like usage rates, error rates, response times, user experience, known vulnerabilities, and average time to fix, and set parameters based on what acceptable levels look like for your product.
- Configure custom alerts. After you understand your KPIs, you can configure your alert and notification systems to inform you when manual intervention is needed. Define a critical situation and configure your alerts to let you know when diagnostic data reaches those levels. Since emergencies can happen at any time, use a variety of platforms to notify team members, like email, phone calls, and text messages.
- Automate to increase coverage. You won’t be able to monitor your infrastructure around the clock. Complexity makes manual intervention increasingly tricky, so automating critical processes can alleviate the pressure, reducing the potential for human error while greatly expanding the coverage of your monitoring systems. Automate your alert systems, update processes, CI/CD pipelines, testing, and other rudimentary development tasks where repetition and speed are important.
- Stress test to discover bottlenecks. Don’t wait for an incident to find out whether your monitoring tools are functioning correctly. A stress test will put your infrastructure through its paces and help you determine if any performance bottlenecks or security weak points keep your application from running at its full potential.
Build a solid foundation for your infrastructure monitoring efforts by reading 5 Application Monitoring Best Practices for DevOps and 6 Infrastructure Monitoring Best Practices Worth Knowing.
The Importance of Cloud Threat Detection
Cloud network monitoring is about more than just tracking how efficiently your systems are running. It’s about monitoring for threats, vulnerabilities, and exploits to ensure your product remains secure against malicious actors.
The complexity of modern cloud-native applications also makes monitoring the attack surface more difficult, especially with manual or ad-hoc processes. Cloud threat detection automates common security checks, scanning the surface for vulnerabilities or unauthorized activity. It then reports these security gaps to your team, allowing them to prioritize fixes and remediate threats as needed.
Monitoring systems should scan infrastructure for potential security issues, such as:
- Misconfigurations that unintentionally expose data or system entry points.
- Identity access management policies that provide too much access for non-critical personnel.
- Shadow IT that may creep in as your team adds new tools or devices to your infrastructure.
- Zero-day vulnerabilities that haven’t been patched.
- Malware and other cyber threats.
- Human error that accidentally exposes new vulnerabilities.
Discover more threat detection tips by reading Cloud Threat Detection: A Guide to Keeping Your Cloud Safe and Efficient.
Strategies for Managing Risk in Cloud Environments
Every business has different tools and policies that govern its approach to cloud risk management. However, there are a few indispensable practices that any team can use to ensure its approach to reducing cyber attacks and minimizing downtime is as effective as possible.
- Continuous monitoring is a critical weapon in the fight against cyber threats. This approach relies on automated around-the-clock surveillance of the entire infrastructure, collecting data and reporting vulnerabilities to security teams so they can discover anomalies and remediate them before malicious actors can exploit them.
- Data encryption keeps sensitive data secure in transit and at rest. Additional security tools, such as third-party encryption software, can offer more protection with unique codes.
- Compliance automation ensures that applications meet crucial government data security and privacy requirements (like HIPAA or GDPR) and will alert development teams if any element of the product falls out of alignment.
- Prioritize access control policies that follow the principle of least privilege, ensuring that employees only have access to the data and systems they need to complete their jobs.
Learn more about the importance of mitigating risk by reading Cloud Risk Management: 5 Best Practices for Keeping a Watchful Eye.
What to Look for When Choosing a Cloud Monitoring Tool
With continuous performance and security monitoring as the priority, organizations should consider cloud based network monitoring tools that can provide the following:
- Real-time updates that provide deep observability into your entire infrastructure, allowing teams to make instant, actionable decisions to bolster their security stance.
- Configurable alert systems that can be customized to notify mission-critical team members when infrastructure meets specific security or performance thresholds.
- Scalability that can keep pace with high-performance loads and an influx of user activity.
- Flexibility that allows for integration with a variety of tools, architectures, and cloud platforms to help you get the most out of your cloud infrastructure monitoring system.
Read 7 Best Infrastructure Monitoring Tools for Your Business to learn more about cloud and infrastructure monitoring tools.
Recommended Cloud Monitoring Tools
No matter what your needs are or what cloud development platform you’re using, there’s a cloud monitoring tool that will help make your product more efficient and secure. The following are just a few recommendations.
- DuploCloud combines numerous DevOps automation features, like infrastructure provisioning, security, compliance, and cloud infrastructure monitoring, into a single, easy-to-use platform.
- Amazon CloudWatch is AWS’ built-in cloud monitoring tool, offering coverage across a wide range of AWS services.
- Azure Monitor tracks cloud infrastructure data on Azure Cloud workflows.
- Google Cloud Observability represents a collection of tools and services designed to monitor performance issues and discover threats in applications running on Google Cloud.
Read The 6 Best Cloud Monitoring Tools Available to get more cloud monitoring tool recommendations.
Gain Deeper Insight With DuploCloud
When it comes to protecting your cloud-native applications, knowledge is power. DuploCloud helps put that knowledge right at your fingertips. You’ll gain powerful continuous monitoring and advanced threat detection capabilities that provide real-time insights into your infrastructure's overall health and security stance. It’ll also automate other essential components of your development pipeline, from provisioning to compliance.
Want to learn more? Contact us today for a 30-minute live demo.