07 September 2021
How SMEs Can Manage Their Network Faults Using Event Actions
Fault management is the process of detecting, analysing and responding to faults in a system. It is an essential part of any IT infrastructure because it helps maintain availability and quality of service for applications.
Event actions, inside opEvents, provides your organisation with fault management visibility at the time of the event, while proactively remediating events, before they become major faults. Its ability to provide early warning detection of potential problems is more than an asset to businesses. By identifying potential hazards before they happen, signifying steps that need to be addressed or escalated before they become significant is highly desirable. You’ll be able to always see happening on your network, including; when events occur on a network, what events occur before faults, what steps were taken to remedy the faults. The combination of these factors will allow you to automatically close events and stop them from escalating to future faults.
This performance management tool will help you save time, money, resources and reputation when dealing with unexpected situations that may arise and allow you to better plan for IT emergencies.
Why Fault Tool Management is so important
The Fault Configuration Accounting Performance Security (FCAPS) framework for managing information security was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to provide a structured approach to Network Management.
It provides an overview of the capabilities required to manage networks effectively, and the F in FCAPS stands for Fault Management, including monitoring, detection and diagnosis.
This framework aims to improve the quality of service that users receive from their networks while also reducing costs associated with faults, outages, and maintenance.
How is your network performing?
FirstWave’s opEvents platform provides an automated network management solution for IT events and faults, making it easy for SMEs to monitor their networks with minimal effort. With our software, you can identify where problems are happening in real-time; without affecting your business operations and customer experience.
We offer an integrated suite of products that can be tailored to meet any business’ needs, from small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) up to large corporations. In addition, our solutions are designed to provide maximum visibility into your networks so you can identify and resolve problems before they cause downtime or financial loss.
Network management system’s like NMIS (Network Management Information System) will send fault and performance events. Increasing the breadth and depth of event management, FirstWave senior engineer Mark Henry explains this in our recent webinar ‘opEvents: All about Event Actions’.
“NMIS has a foundation escalation system that handles events singularly, however by employing opEvents you have the ability of automated event correlation”.
You can install opEvents easily as a standalone product at our downloads page, or it is available as part of our FirstWave virtual appliance package.
Why log analysis tools are essential for all businesses
Pro-consumer cyber security and privacy comparison website Comparitech has ranked opEvents in its list of 12 Best Log Analysis Tools, stating that it ranks highly because: “This centralised log and event manager reduces the impact of network faults and failures using proactive event management.”
In the article, Comparitech network administration expert Tim Keary wrote that: “Poor performance can emerge unexpectedly at any time. Network monitoring platforms like log analysis tools allow you to spot performance issues before they arise.”
Keary outlined that strong log analysers like opEvents provided users with data they wouldn’t otherwise have that included:
- The ability to quantify the number of log messages that arrive in a given period by using statistics to understand and improve performance-related issues and optimise security measures.
- Filtering and sorting tools that are capable of identifying and separating sources and events.
- Correlation systems enable log messages generated in different formats to be analysed together to make sense of fragmented data.
- A system of highlighting to make patterns in data more accessible to identify visually.
- The ability to interpret a wide range of raw data and then present it to you through charts that make sense.
Here at FirstWave, we have seen many IT departments transformed by implementing our suite of tools to automate network Fault Management. To start making decisions through meaningful and actionable data to automatically troubleshoot your events book a demo today.