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System Monitoring and Performance Management Policy

Policy Status: Draft

This policy is currently draft.

Purpose

To ensure the availability, reliability, and optimal performance of Acme Corp's IT systems and applications through comprehensive, continuous monitoring and proactive performance management, enabling rapid issue detection, capacity planning, and continuous improvement of system performance.

Scope

This policy applies to all critical systems, applications, and infrastructure managed by Acme Corp, including:

Infrastructure: - Physical and virtual servers - Storage systems and SAN/NAS devices - Network equipment (routers, switches, firewalls) - Load balancers and proxy servers - Environmental systems (HVAC, power, physical access)

Applications and Services: - Web applications and portals - APIs and microservices - Databases and data warehouses - Email and collaboration systems - Authentication and identity services - Business-critical SaaS applications

Cloud Infrastructure: - Cloud compute instances (EC2, Azure VMs) - Container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS) - Cloud storage (S3, Azure Blob) - Cloud databases (RDS, DynamoDB) - Cloud networking and CDN

End-User Services: - Client device health - Application performance from user perspective - Network connectivity and bandwidth - VPN and remote access services

Policy Statement

Comprehensive Monitoring Coverage

All critical systems must have comprehensive monitoring:

  • Availability Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of system uptime and service availability
  • Performance Monitoring: Track key performance metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network)
  • Application Monitoring: Monitor application health, response times, and errors
  • User Experience Monitoring: Track end-user experience and application performance
  • Security Monitoring: Monitor for security events, anomalies, and threats
  • Capacity Monitoring: Track resource utilization and growth trends
  • Dependency Monitoring: Monitor integrations and third-party service dependencies

Monitoring Tools and Platforms

Acme Corp employs standardized monitoring tools:

  • Infrastructure Monitoring: DataDog, AWS CloudWatch, or approved equivalent
  • Application Performance Monitoring (APM): New Relic, DataDog APM, or approved equivalent
  • Log Aggregation: Splunk, ELK Stack, or approved equivalent
  • Uptime Monitoring: Pingdom, UptimeRobot, or approved equivalent
  • Synthetic Monitoring: For critical user workflows and transactions
  • Real User Monitoring (RUM): Track actual user experience
  • Network Monitoring: SolarWinds, PRTG, or approved equivalent

Performance Thresholds and Baselines

Systems must meet defined performance standards:

Response Time Thresholds: - Critical Systems: <2 seconds for 95th percentile - Essential Systems: <3 seconds for 95th percentile - Standard Systems: <5 seconds for 95th percentile

Resource Utilization Thresholds: - CPU: Warning at 70%, Critical at 85% - Memory: Warning at 80%, Critical at 90% - Disk Space: Warning at 75%, Critical at 85% - Network: Warning at 70% capacity, Critical at 85% - Database Connections: Warning at 70%, Critical at 85%

Availability Targets: - Critical Systems: 99.9% uptime - Essential Systems: 99.5% uptime - Standard Systems: 99.0% uptime

Performance Baselines: - Establish performance baselines for each system - Review and update baselines quarterly - Use baselines to detect anomalies and degradation - Document baseline methodology and metrics

Alerting and Notification

Monitoring systems must provide timely alerts:

Alert Severity Levels: - Critical: Immediate attention required, system outage or severe degradation - Warning: Degraded performance or approaching thresholds - Info: Notable events requiring awareness but not immediate action

Alert Routing: - Critical Alerts: Page on-call engineer immediately, post to #ops-alerts Slack - Warning Alerts: Post to #ops-alerts Slack, email to IT team - Info Alerts: Log to monitoring system, daily summary email

Alert Configuration: - Alerts based on meaningful thresholds, not arbitrary values - Implement smart alerting with anomaly detection where applicable - Use alert suppression during maintenance windows - Configure escalation for unacknowledged critical alerts - Regular review to reduce alert fatigue and false positives

On-Call Rotation: - 24/7 on-call coverage for critical systems - Weekly rotation schedule published in advance - Primary and backup on-call engineers designated - Escalation procedures documented - On-call engineers receive alerts via phone, SMS, and Slack

Routine Maintenance and Optimization

Regular performance maintenance activities:

Daily Tasks: - Review overnight alerts and system status - Check backup completion and success - Monitor critical system performance metrics - Review error logs for anomalies

Weekly Tasks: - Analyze performance trends - Review capacity utilization - Check for software updates and patches - Optimize database queries and indexes - Review slow query logs

Monthly Tasks: - Generate performance summary reports - Conduct capacity planning review - Evaluate new monitoring requirements - Update performance baselines - Review and tune alert thresholds - Test monitoring coverage for new systems

Quarterly Tasks: - Comprehensive performance assessment - Evaluate monitoring tool effectiveness - Review and update SLAs based on performance data - Conduct disaster recovery monitoring tests - Assess need for infrastructure upgrades

Performance Reporting

Regular reporting on system performance:

Daily Dashboard: - Real-time system status - Current performance metrics - Active alerts and incidents - Available on internal monitoring portal

Weekly Summary: - Performance highlights and issues - Trending metrics - Capacity utilization - Distributed to IT team

Monthly Report: - Detailed performance analysis - SLA compliance metrics - Capacity trends and forecasts - Incident summary - Recommendations for optimization - Distributed to IT leadership

Quarterly Business Review: - Executive summary of system performance - Trend analysis and year-over-year comparison - Major incidents and resolutions - Infrastructure investment recommendations - Presented to executive leadership

Capacity Planning

Proactive capacity management:

  • Trend Analysis: Monitor resource usage trends to predict future needs
  • Growth Forecasting: Project capacity requirements 6-12 months ahead
  • Threshold Management: Proactively expand capacity before reaching limits
  • Cost Optimization: Balance performance needs with cost efficiency
  • Quarterly Reviews: Formal capacity planning reviews each quarter
  • Documentation: Maintain capacity plan with projected growth and requirements

Incident Detection and Response

Monitoring enables rapid incident response:

  • Automated Detection: Monitoring systems automatically detect and alert on issues
  • Rapid Triage: On-call engineers assess severity within 15 minutes
  • Incident Creation: Critical issues generate incident tickets automatically
  • Escalation: Alerts escalate if not acknowledged within defined timeframe
  • Post-Incident Analysis: Review monitoring data to understand root cause
  • Continuous Improvement: Update monitoring based on incident lessons learned

Roles and Responsibilities

Role Responsibility
Chief Technology Officer Approve monitoring strategy, review performance reports, fund infrastructure improvements
IT Operations Manager Oversee monitoring program, ensure coverage, review performance trends
DevOps/SRE Team Configure and maintain monitoring tools, create alerts, respond to incidents
On-Call Engineers Respond to alerts 24/7, triage and resolve incidents, escalate as needed
System Administrators Monitor assigned systems, optimize performance, maintain thresholds
Database Administrators Monitor database performance, optimize queries, manage capacity
Network Team Monitor network infrastructure, optimize traffic, manage bandwidth
Security Team Review security monitoring data, investigate anomalies
Development Team Instrument applications with monitoring, respond to performance issues
Help Desk Monitor user-reported performance issues, create tickets for trends

Procedures

Implementing Monitoring for New Systems

When deploying new systems:

1. Planning Phase

  1. Define monitoring requirements
  2. Identify critical metrics to monitor
  3. Determine appropriate thresholds
  4. Plan alert configuration

2. Implementation

  1. Install monitoring agents/integrations
  2. Configure metric collection
  3. Set up dashboards
  4. Create alerts for critical metrics
  5. Configure log forwarding
  6. Test monitoring functionality

3. Validation

  1. Verify metrics being collected correctly
  2. Test alert delivery
  3. Ensure dashboard displays expected data
  4. Validate log aggregation

4. Documentation

  1. Document monitoring configuration
  2. Create runbooks for common alerts
  3. Add system to monitoring inventory
  4. Update on-call procedures

5. Baseline Establishment

  1. Monitor for 2-4 weeks to establish baseline
  2. Analyze normal performance patterns
  3. Tune thresholds based on actual usage
  4. Document baseline metrics

Alert Response Procedures

When receiving an alert:

  1. Acknowledge (within 5 minutes):
  2. Acknowledge alert in monitoring system
  3. Prevents escalation and duplicate notifications

  4. Indicates engineer is aware and investigating

  5. Assess (within 15 minutes):

  6. Review alert details and metrics
  7. Check related systems and dependencies
  8. Determine scope and impact
  9. Classify severity (Critical, Warning, Info)
  10. Create incident ticket for Critical issues

6. Investigate

  1. Review monitoring dashboards for trends
  2. Check system logs for errors
  3. Analyze performance metrics
  4. Review recent changes or deployments
  5. Check for related alerts

7. Resolve or Escalate

  1. Implement fix if issue identified
  2. Escalate to specialist if outside expertise
  3. Engage vendor support if vendor-related
  4. Notify management for high-impact incidents
  5. Update incident ticket with progress

8. Validate

  1. Verify metrics returned to normal
  2. Confirm alert cleared
  3. Test system functionality
  4. Monitor for recurrence

9. Document

  1. Update incident ticket with resolution
  2. Document root cause
  3. Create knowledge base article if applicable
  4. Update runbooks if new scenario

Performance Degradation Response

When performance degradation detected:

10. Identify Degradation

  1. Monitoring alerts on response time or throughput
  2. User reports of slowness
  3. Automated anomaly detection

11. Quick Assessment

  1. Check current resource utilization
  2. Review recent changes or deployments
  3. Check for abnormal traffic patterns
  4. Review error rates

12. Immediate Mitigation

  1. Scale resources if capacity issue
  2. Restart services if memory leak suspected
  3. Enable caching or CDN if applicable
  4. Implement rate limiting if abuse detected
  5. Activate additional capacity

13. Root Cause Analysis

  1. Analyze application performance traces
  2. Review slow query logs
  3. Check for N+1 queries or inefficient code
  4. Identify bottlenecks in system
  5. Review third-party service performance

14. Implement Fix

  1. Optimize database queries
  2. Add caching layers
  3. Scale infrastructure
  4. Fix application code issues
  5. Optimize configurations

15. Validation and Testing

  1. Verify performance improvement
  2. Compare to baseline metrics
  3. Conduct load testing if appropriate
  4. Monitor closely for 24-48 hours

16. Prevention

  1. Update capacity plans if scaling needed
  2. Improve monitoring if issue wasn't detected early
  3. Update performance baselines
  4. Document lessons learned

Capacity Planning Process

Quarterly capacity planning:

17. Data Collection

  1. Export resource utilization data for past quarter
  2. Gather growth metrics (users, transactions, data volume)
  3. Review performance trends
  4. Compile cost data for current infrastructure

18. Trend Analysis

  1. Calculate growth rates for key metrics
  2. Identify seasonal patterns
  3. Project utilization 6-12 months ahead
  4. Identify systems approaching capacity

19. Capacity Assessment

  1. Compare projections to current capacity
  2. Identify systems requiring expansion
  3. Assess performance vs. cost trade-offs
  4. Consider new technologies or approaches

20. Recommendation Development

  1. Propose infrastructure expansions
  2. Estimate costs and timelines
  3. Prioritize based on urgency and impact
  4. Identify optimization opportunities

21. Review and Approval

  1. Present to IT leadership
  2. Review budget implications
  3. Obtain approval for recommendations
  4. Schedule implementation

22. Implementation

  1. Execute approved capacity increases
  2. Validate performance improvements
  3. Update capacity plan
  4. Monitor to verify projections

Monthly Performance Review

First week of each month:

23. Data Compilation

  1. Export performance metrics from monitoring tools
  2. Compile incident and alert statistics
  3. Gather SLA compliance data
  4. Review capacity utilization

24. Analysis

  1. Calculate average response times
  2. Determine availability percentages
  3. Identify performance trends (improving/degrading)
  4. Review top alerts and incidents
  5. Compare to previous months

25. Report Generation

  1. Create monthly performance report
  2. Include executive summary
  3. Highlight issues and improvements
  4. Provide capacity forecast update
  5. List recommendations

26. Review Meeting

  1. Present findings to IT leadership
  2. Discuss action items
  3. Prioritize performance improvements
  4. Allocate resources for optimization

27. Action Items

  1. Create tickets for identified issues
  2. Schedule optimization work
  3. Update monitoring as needed
  4. Communicate findings to stakeholders

Monitoring Tool Maintenance

Ongoing maintenance of monitoring infrastructure:

28. Daily

  1. Verify monitoring agents running
  2. Check monitoring system health
  3. Ensure data collection continuous

29. Weekly

  1. Review monitoring system performance
  2. Check for failed monitors or stale data
  3. Update monitoring agent versions
  4. Review disk space for log storage

30. Monthly

  1. Audit monitoring coverage
  2. Review alert effectiveness and accuracy
  3. Update monitoring dashboards
  4. Clean up obsolete monitors
  5. Review access permissions

31. Quarterly

  1. Evaluate monitoring tool licenses and costs
  2. Assess tool performance and capabilities
  3. Consider new monitoring features
  4. Conduct disaster recovery test of monitoring

Exceptions

Exceptions to monitoring requirements:

  • Development/Test Systems: May have reduced monitoring (availability only)
  • Decommissioning Systems: Monitoring may be reduced for systems being retired
  • Third-Party SaaS: Limited monitoring based on vendor-provided metrics
  • Low-Impact Systems: Non-critical internal tools may have basic monitoring only

Exception process: - Document exception with justification - IT Operations Manager approval - Maintain exception register - Review quarterly for continued applicability

Compliance and Enforcement

  • Monitoring Coverage: All production systems must have monitoring (target: 100%)
  • Alert Response: Critical alerts acknowledged within 5 minutes (target: 95%)
  • Uptime Compliance: Systems meet availability SLAs (target: per SLA)
  • Reporting: Monthly performance reports delivered on schedule (target: 100%)
  • Capacity Reviews: Quarterly capacity planning completed (target: 100%)
  • Audit Trail: All monitoring configurations and changes logged
  • Regular Audits: Quarterly review of monitoring effectiveness
  • Continuous Improvement: Regular optimization based on performance data and incidents

References

  • Google Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Book
  • ITIL Service Operation - Event Management
  • ISO/IEC 20000: IT Service Management
  • SOC 2 Trust Service Criteria: Monitoring Controls
  • NIST SP 800-137: Information Security Continuous Monitoring
  • The Four Golden Signals (Latency, Traffic, Errors, Saturation)

Revision History

Version Date Author Changes
1.0 2025-11-08 IT Team Initial version migrated from Notion

Document Control - Classification: Internal - Distribution: IT team, operations team, development team - Storage: GitHub repository - policy-repository