Does it bring you joy?

We will save that question for when you clean out your network closet.

Does it grow with you?

The best tools start simple and grow with you as you learn them. Remote monitoring solutions should be flexible enough that they set up easy in the beginning but can be more advanced as you learn the tool. This way you don’t outgrow the solution and can use it at the level of complexity that makes you comfortable.

Can it do more than monitoring?

Remote monitoring is excellent for keeping tabs on things, but when you get an alert, you want to do something about it. My favorite tools incorporate functionality with monitoring.

Lansweeper, for example, has tools that allow you to perform actions on the assets it monitors. You can look up a user, find out which PC they logged into, get configuration information about the machine, ping the computer, check the services and start/stop/restart them, remote into the PC, and much more; all from the same monitoring interface. You can look at your printers, select one, see the information collected, and then go straight to the web interface all with a few clicks.

Meraki networking equipment lets you find a device, see who logged into it, trace the switch and port it connects to, see what network activity it has had, ping the device, and do a packet capture all from the same interface. If you have a power over internet device, like a phone, you can bounce the port and reboot the phone. You can examine the internet traffic, and if you find something like video using too much bandwidth, you can perform traffic shaping and restrict that traffic all from the same interface.

Functionality like this can make the difference in avoiding the need to make a site visit. Whether your site is in another town or another continent, those visits slow things down. The more you can handle remotely; the more efficient your team can be.

What are your peers using?

Check and see what your peers are using and ask for a demo of the tools they like.

How can you combine sources and be more efficient?

Combining alerts from different sources can be easy and useful. Teamviewer gives popup messages when someone logs into a PC configured for remote access, and I usually ignore them. When I have a site that is down, and I am waiting on the ISP to bring it back online, my tools can help me keep on top of the status. When I get text messages from my Meraki equipment letting me know the devices are back online, I am aware the internet is back up, but when I see the cluster Teamviewer alerts that those PCs are logging back in, I am confident the site is up and functioning without having to check.

A good friend reminded me that one of our best remote monitoring tools is staff awareness. Train staff to alert you proactively when they see something unusual.

These tips can help you find useful remote monitoring tools that can save time, money and make your team more productive.