An approach to consolidate and optimize monitoring solutions

Like most IT service providers, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) is facing the challenge of managing complex monitoring solutions, consisting of various tools offering monitoring capabilities for the different systems and applications in support of the services provided. Monitoring encompasses a wide range of functional aspects, and therefore it is hardly possible to significantly reduce the portfolio and number of tools. High administration effort and expensive licensing are typical consequences. This short paper introduces a systematic and holistic approach that shall help an IT service provider to analyze their entire monitoring environment. Further, this method provides guidance on how to consolidate the tool landscape and optimize tool support for IT Service Management (ITSM) processes.