Monitoring educational IT infrastructures with PRTG

For years there was a strong trend for schools and universities to deliver more and more content in virtual format, making learning and studying independent from time and place. With the coronavirus pandemic, this process has been accelerated to the speed of light. Within one day pupils and students had to stay at home; schools and universities became 100% virtual.

Virtual classrooms, lessons via live stream and one-on-one conversations via video calls are all on the agenda. Even sports lessons have been “digitalized.” To realize all this, IT managers in the education sector had to provide a solution within a very short time. At the same time, the dependency on a high-performance and functioning IT infrastructure is increasing and the need for an all-encompassing surveillance solution is growing.

Typical requirements for a monitoring solution in the education sector

• Distributed locations

  IT infrastructures of educational and research institutions are often distributed over several locations, within a city or in several buildings on a campus. Usually the result of history, this poses a major challenge for IT managers. Servers, devices and applications must be available at all locations at all times and an uninterrupted data exchange between the locations must be ensured.

• Virtual learning environments

  Today more than ever, providing a virtual learning environment has become the biggest challenge. Aside from classic materials that have to be available at any time and any place, video on demand and video conferencing have become a central element of remote teaching. That creates completely new demands and requirements.

• Heterogeneous infrastructures

  Heterogeneous infrastructures are usually due to irregular growth or arise because they have not been modernized in a consistent manner. New, modern equipment often has to be brought into line with outdated equipment, which can often turn out to be an unplanned, time-consuming challenge. It becomes even more difficult when IT environments of different departments are combined and the existing technical equipment has to be reconciled with the requirements.

These are only some of the requirements that those responsible for IT in the education sector are confronted with. But how can all these structures, distributed locations and individual systems be brought under one roof and monitored?

The solution: PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor can master all these challenges and is therefore the perfect solution for monitoring IT structures in the education sector.

Get a centralized overview of distributed locations, heterogeneous environments and integrate IT external systems like video conferencing equipment, surveillance cameras and door lock systems. In addition to a variety of notification options, such as email, SMS or push notification, you can design a dashboard according to your needs via drag & drop and be constantly informed about the status of everything that matters.

PRTG provides standard sensors for monitoring uptime, availability and workload and many predefined sensors for leading manufacturers as well as custom sensors that allows you to monitor almost everything. Regular updates and improvements make PRTG a future-proof, efficient and easy-to-use solution that more than 300,000 admins already rely on.

What challenges do you have to face as an IT administrator of an educational institution? We look forward to your comments!