How do you update your system monitoring skills?

1 Learn the basics

Before you dive into the advanced topics of system monitoring, you need to master the fundamentals. This includes understanding the concepts of metrics, logs, alerts, dashboards, and root cause analysis. You also need to familiarize yourself with the common tools and protocols used for system monitoring, such as SNMP, Nagios, Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK. You can find online courses, books, blogs, podcasts, and videos that cover these basics and provide practical examples.

2 Follow the trends

System monitoring is influenced by the trends and innovations in the IT industry, such as cloud computing, microservices, containerization, serverless, DevOps, and AI. Keep up with these trends and learn how they affect your system monitoring strategies and practices. For example, you might need to learn how to monitor cloud-based services, such as AWS or Azure, or how to use tools like Kubernetes or Lambda for monitoring containerized or serverless applications. You can follow the news, blogs, podcasts, and social media of the leading vendors, experts, and communities in these fields.

3 Practice your skills

The best way to improve your system monitoring skills and knowledge is to practice them in real or simulated scenarios. You can use online platforms, such as Katacoda, Instruqt, or Cloud Academy, that offer interactive labs and challenges for system monitoring. You can also create your own projects or experiments using free or low-cost tools and services, such as AWS Free Tier, Google Cloud Platform, or Docker. You can also join online competitions or hackathons that involve system monitoring tasks.

4 Get certified

Another way to train and update your system monitoring skills and knowledge is to get certified by reputable organizations or vendors. Certification can help you validate your skills, demonstrate your expertise, and boost your career prospects. There are various certification programs available for system monitoring, such as CompTIA Network+, Cisco CCNA, AWS Certified SysOps Administrator, Microsoft Azure Administrator, or Google Cloud Associate Engineer. You can prepare for these exams by taking online courses, reading books, or using practice tests.

5 Join a community

One of the best sources of learning and updating your system monitoring skills and knowledge is your peers. You can join a community of system monitoring enthusiasts and professionals who share their insights, experiences, tips, and resources. You can participate in online forums, groups, chats, or webinars, such as Reddit, Stack Overflow, Slack, or Meetup. You can also attend offline events, such as conferences, workshops, or meetups, where you can network, learn, and exchange ideas with other system monitoring practitioners.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?