Businesses heavily rely on their IT infrastructure and applications to deliver products and services to customers in today’s digital world. To ensure that these systems are running optimally, enterprise IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs) require a comprehensive view of their entire IT environment. To address this need, IT infrastructure monitoring platforms play a critical role.
These platforms are vital for enterprise IT and MSPs to ensure the optimal performance, availability, and reliability of their IT infrastructure and applications. They provide real-time visibility, centralized monitoring and management, comprehensive analytics, collaboration and communication, and cost savings. All of these features are essential for delivering high-quality services to customers and achieving business objectives.
An IT infrastructure monitoring platform collects and analyzes data from various sources, such as applications, networks, and infrastructure, to provide real-time visibility into system performance. With a unified observability platform, IT teams and MSPs can monitor their entire IT environment from a centralized location, making it easier to identify and diagnose issues, reduce response times, and improve overall system performance. Additionally, real-time visibility into system performance enables teams to proactively detect and address issues before they affect end users.
IT infrastructure monitoring platforms also offer comprehensive analytics capabilities. These insights enable IT teams and MSPs to analyze system data, identify trends, and optimize system performance. This data can assist teams in making informed decisions about how to improve their systems and services. In this article, we will be reviewing the Netreo IT infrastructure monitoring platform, which will help you select the right platform for your organization.
Overview of Netreo
Netreo is an IT infrastructure monitoring platform that provides end-to-end visibility, automation, and control over complex IT environments. It offers a comprehensive suite of monitoring and management tools to optimize IT infrastructure performance, availability, and security. The platform provides real-time full-stack visibility into the entire IT infrastructure, including servers, networks, applications, systems, applications, user experience, and cloud environments — in a single unified dashboard. It also provides intelligent monitoring and alerting capabilities to identify and resolve issues proactively.
Key Features:
- Unified Dashboard: Offers a single-pane view of all IT assets.
- Advanced Analytics: Powerful tools to analyze and improve system performance.
- Proactive Alerting: Automatically notifies about potential issues.
- Flexible Deployment: Supports cloud, on-premise, and hybrid setups.
- Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with third-party tools like ServiceNow and Jira
Netreo offers advanced automation and control capabilities, such as network management, server management, database monitoring, mobile management, configuration management, and many others. The platform supports a wide range of technologies, including on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments, making it a flexible solution for various organizations. Additionally, Netreo provides integrations with other IT tools, such as ServiceNow and Jira, to streamline IT operations further.
Pros:
- End-to-End Visibility: Provides comprehensive monitoring across all network layers.
- Automation and Control: Enhances efficiency with automated management features.
- Supports Multiple Environments: Equally adept in handling on-premise, cloud, and hybrid models.
Cons:
- Complex Setup: May require detailed configuration to align with specific IT environments.
- Requires Technical Expertise: Optimal use necessitates a solid understanding of various IT frameworks.
Installation and Deployment
Netreo can be deployed on-premise, cloud, or in hybrid environments, depending on the organization’s needs. The installation process for on-premise deployment involves ensuring that the hardware and software requirements are met, installing the Netreo software, configuring it to match the organization’s environment, integrating data sources, and validating the installation.
Cloud deployment is hosted on Netreo’s cloud infrastructure, eliminating the need for hardware installation. Hybrid deployment combines on-premise and cloud deployment to provide a flexible solution for organizations. Netreo supports a wide range of data sources and provides detailed instructions and support to ensure a successful installation and deployment process.
Netreo’s product can be deployed as a virtual appliance (VA) within the customer’s virtualization environment, which fully supports all of its functions and features. Customers subscribed to the Netreo “Ultimate” package can utilize a sandbox deployment of Netreo SaaS to facilitate testing and staging. Netreo leverages existing manufacturer APIs to gather data from systems, eliminating the need to install additional agents. For optimal performance and protection, Netreo advises installing the software on a core network, within any firewalls employed for perimeter protection.
How Netreo Works
Netreo IT infrastructure monitoring platform works by collecting and analyzing data from various sources, including network devices, servers, applications, and cloud services. Netreo uses existing manufacturer APIs to collect data from systems without having to install additional agents, reducing the impact on system performance. It also supports SNMP, WMI, JMX, and Syslog protocols to collect data from devices and services that do not have APIs.
Netreo has a multi-tiered system architecture consisting of a data collection tier for agents and sensors, a data processing tier with the Netreo engine, and a user interface tier with dashboards and reporting. The system architecture is designed for scalability and high availability.
Netreo’s data collection engine normalizes and consolidates the collected data, providing a unified view of the entire IT infrastructure. The platform uses advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and anomalies in the data, helping users identify potential issues and resolve them before they impact users.
Netreo’s dashboards provide a real-time view of the IT infrastructure, enabling users to monitor system performance and availability. Users can customize the dashboards to show the metrics and KPIs that matter to them, enabling them to monitor their critical systems proactively.
Netreo’s intelligent alerts system notifies users of issues and potential issues, enabling them to take corrective action before users are affected. Netreo’s reporting engine provides users with pre-built and customizable reports, giving them insights into system performance, availability, and compliance. Netreo’s integration capabilities allow users to integrate with third-party tools and services, enabling them to automate processes, trigger workflows, and share data with other teams seamlessly.
Netreo AIOps Capabilities
AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) refers to a technology platform that automates and enhances IT operations through multiple layers. Generally, AIOps comprises two components: big data and machine learning. AIOps platforms collect monitoring and engagement data and use machine learning algorithms to analyze and automate core IT functions.
Netreo offers advanced AIOps capabilities that use machine learning and predictive analytics to help organizations proactively identify and resolve issues before they impact end users. By leveraging these advanced AIOps capabilities, Netreo helps IT teams to proactively detect and resolve issues, reduce downtime, and optimize the performance of their IT environment, leading to improved overall system reliability and end-user satisfaction.
Netreo AIOps capabilities are as follows:
- Anomaly detection Netreo’s AIOps technology uses machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and trends in data collected from the IT environment, enabling it to identify anomalies that may indicate potential issues.
- Root cause analysis Netreo’s AIOps technology uses data correlation and analysis to identify the root cause of issues, reducing the time and effort required to troubleshoot and resolve issues.
- Predictive analytics Netreo’s AIOps technology uses predictive analytics to anticipate potential issues and identify areas of the IT environment that may be at risk.
- Intelligent automation Netreo’s AIOps technology can automate routine tasks and actions, such as ticketing, remediation, and escalation, based on predefined policies and thresholds.
Netreo’s AIOps capabilities leverage many years of practical use cases to provide recommendations for the Netreo application. This feature enables network and system administrators to spend less time fine-tuning their NMS platforms and more time focusing on end-user support, engineering, and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs).
Dashboards and Visualizations
Netreo provides customizable dashboards and visualizations to enable users to visualize and analyze their IT infrastructure data in real-time. Users can choose from a range of predefined dashboard templates or build their own dashboards using drag-and-drop widgets. Netreo’s dashboards are customizable to suit different users’ roles and requirements, and users can select from a range of widgets such as gauges, charts, tables, and maps to display their data. Users can also configure alert thresholds and set up notifications to receive real-time alerts when metrics exceed the predefined thresholds.
In addition, Netreo’s dashboards provide interactive data exploration capabilities, allowing users to drill down into specific data points to identify the root cause of issues quickly. This capability enables users to make informed decisions based on the data presented. Netreo also provides visualization tools that help users analyze and interpret their IT infrastructure data. Users can create custom visualizations using Netreo’s drag-and-drop tools or choose from a range of predefined visualizations. These visualizations include heat maps, topology maps, and network diagrams, which help users identify trends, troubleshoot issues, and gain insights into their IT infrastructure’s overall health.
The visualization dashboard is made up of three panels of information, with each panel or tab focused on specific aspects of the resource, as detailed below:
- Monitoring Check Health Shows the current aggregate number of monitoring checks assigned to this device that are in the CRITICAL, WARNING, ACKNOWLEDGED, and HEALTHY states.
- Memory Panel This panel contains a bar graph visualizing used storage memory versus free storage memory.
- Hosts Panel This panel contains a table of hosts connected to this data store, along with statistics on read/write requests and device/kernel latency.
Alerts, Reporting, and Integration
Netreo provides a robust alerts and notifications system that enables users to monitor their IT infrastructure proactively. Users can set up alert thresholds and receive real-time notifications when a metric exceeds the predefined threshold. Netreo also provides customizable alert policies that allow users to tailor the alerting behavior based on the type of metric, device, or service.
Netreo’s comprehensive reporting engine provides pre-built reports for common use cases such as availability, performance, and compliance. Users can also create their custom reports using Netreo’s drag-and-drop report builder.
Netreo integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and services, including popular databases (SQL server, Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB, and more), cloud platforms (Amazon, Azure, Google), firewalls (Cisco, FireEye, Juniper SonicWall, and more), SD-WAN platforms (Velocloud, Cisco Meraki, Silverpeak, etc.), and many others. Netreo also provides a REST API that allows users to integrate with custom applications and services. Netreo’s integrations enable users to streamline their IT operations by centralizing their data and notifications. By integrating with third-party systems, users can automate processes, trigger workflows, and share data with other teams seamlessly.
Licensing and Price Plans
Netreo offers flexible licensing and price plans to meet the needs of different customers. The company offers two main product editions: Professional, and Ultimate, each with varying features and capabilities. The Professional Edition is the enterprise monitoring and automation solution for your hybrid IT infrastructure, with support for up to 10,000 resources (min 100). It also includes integration capabilities with third-party tools and services, and Its pricing model is per resource, per month, billed annually. The Ultimate Edition is a customizable, scalable, and intelligent enterprise solution for your most complex hybrid-IT infrastructure monitoring and automation needs with support for unlimited resources (min 100).
Both editions support SaaS and on-premises deployments. It also includes access to a sandbox deployment of Netreo SaaS for testing and staging purposes. Customers can choose between perpetual licensing or subscription-based pricing models, with discounts available for longer term commitments. According to Netreo, its “device-count licensing means it’s easy to figure out exactly how many licenses you require. And since Netreo is completely self-contained, there are no hidden costs for databases, anti-virus, or operating systems to worry about.”
Additionally, Netreo offers a free live demo of the product for interested customers, allowing them to test the platform’s features and capabilities before committing to a purchase. The company also provides professional services and support to assist customers with the installation, configuration, and ongoing management of their Netreo deployment.
Concluding Remarks
Netreo is a comprehensive IT infrastructure monitoring platform that offers a wide range of features and capabilities to help businesses monitor and manage their IT environments effectively. Its platform includes a wide range of monitoring tools, customizable dashboards, and advanced alerting and reporting capabilities that allow IT teams to proactively detect and address issues before they impact end users.
Netreo’s licensing and pricing plans are flexible and can be customized to meet the specific needs of different organizations. Its Standard, Professional, and Ultimate editions offer varying levels of features and capabilities, making it an ideal solution for small to enterprise-level organizations.
Overall, Netreo is a reliable and powerful IT infrastructure monitoring platform that provides real-time visibility, centralized monitoring, and management, comprehensive analytics, collaboration and communication, and cost savings, making it a valuable asset to businesses looking to optimize their IT systems and services.
