Active Monitoring –
Active monitoring is a proactive health-check mechanism designed for Lync system administrators to ensure the reliability, performance, and availability of Lync infrastructure components such as pools, servers, and network connectivity.
- Purpose: Unlike passive monitoring, which relies on alerts generated by issues after they occur, active monitoring continuously sends synthetic transactions or test requests to Lync servers and services. This allows administrators to detect problems before end users are affected.
- How it works:
- Simulated user actions (like logging in, making a call, or sending an instant message) are performed at scheduled intervals.
- These tests verify the functionality of key services like SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), conferencing, voice quality, and connectivity between data centers.
- Results from these tests are sent back to a centralized dashboard or monitoring tool.
- Scope:
- Active monitoring can cover multiple data canters, allowing administrators to check if inter-data center communication is stable.
- It helps monitor the status of individual servers within a pool and the overall health of the pool itself.
- Network paths between data canters and to users over the public Internet are also monitored for latency, packet loss, or other issues.
- Benefits:
- Early detection of issues like server failures, configuration errors, or network disruptions.
- Better SLA (Service Level Agreement) compliance due to proactive problem identification.
- Reduced downtime and improved end-user experience by addressing issues before they impact users.
- Tools: Microsoft provides Active Monitoring through the Lync Server Management Shell and integrates with System Canter Operations Manager (SCOM) for centralized monitoring and alerting.