IT monitoring is the process to gather metrics about the operations of an IT environment's hardware and software to ensure everything functions as expected to support applications and services.

Basic monitoring is performed through device operation checks, while more advanced monitoring gives granular views on operational statuses, including average response times, number of application instances, error and request rates, CPU usage and application availability.

How IT monitoring works

IT monitoring covers three sections, called the foundation, software and interpretation.

Foundation. The infrastructure is the lowest layer of a software stack and includes physical or virtual devices, such as servers, CPUs and VMs.

Software. This part is sometimes referred to as the monitoring section and it analyzes what is working on the devices in the foundation, including CPU usage, load, memory and a running VM count.

Interpretation. Gathered metrics are presented through graphs or data charts, often on a GUI dashboard. This is often accomplished through integration with tools that specifically focus on data visualization.