By Paul Parker, SolarWinds Federal & National Government Chief Technologist
Remote management can be much easier to get wrong than to get right. Getting it right takes an understanding of your current needs, infrastructure, and how things may evolve; an understanding of what you need to manage; and how best to perform remote management within your agency.
We suggest three steps: planning, investing in the right tools, and taking a big-picture approach.
Step One: Planning
As with any new project or implementation, you must know where you are and where you want to go before you can get started.
Start with discovery. Then, gain an understanding of compatibility and performance: are databases, routers, severs, applications, and operating systems all performing optimally? Perform baseline measurements to be sure you can differentiate between normal activity and a potential “event,” or identify trends that may not occur as suddenly but have a similarly large impact.
The next part of planning is understanding the future. Will there be architecture changes or a need for increased bandwidth? Take as much into account as possible with the understanding that there is no way to predict every change.
Finally, the planning phase includes goals: what do you want to manage?
Step Two: Investing in the Right Tools
Invest in tools that can give you all the information and control you need. For example, consider tools that give you information about remote devices before you connect to them. Taking that concept even further, consider tools that do far more than simple remote control or basic troubleshooting. Remote administration should be your goal if you’re looking to maximize your time and investment.
When selecting which tools to use, one must consider scalability and flexibility, as well as government security requirements such as smart card support.
By investing in the necessary tools to assist in diagnostics, repairs, and management, agencies can prepare their networks to solve issues that arise.
Step Three: Taking a Big-Picture Approach
A complete approach will involve best-in-class tools, each of which specialize in a specific part of remote management. That said, the most important point is to be sure all those tools work together.
Especially when managing a highly disparate infrastructure, it is absolutely necessary to be able to see the bigger picture—to see how everything is operating as a whole, and to be able to drill down to the individual network, server, or end-user device to troubleshoot and solve problems that may arise.
Conclusion
Successful remote management can help federal IT teams manage multiple disparate systems at once, from a single management point; remotely diagnose and rectify problems within the network; and leverage automation to improve efficiency—all of which can help teams more effectively focus on the agency’s mission.
Find the full article on Government Technology Insider.
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