Question 1

What is server monitoring software?

Accepted Answer

Server monitoring software continuously collects performance and health data from servers (CPU, memory, disk, network, processes, services) and alerts administrators when thresholds are breached or anomalies are detected.

Question 2

What is the difference between server monitoring and application monitoring?

Accepted Answer

Server monitoring focuses on the host and infrastructure layer (OS resources, hardware health, uptime), while application performance monitoring (APM) tracks code-level performance, transactions, and user experience within applications.

Question 3

Do server monitoring tools support cloud instances?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Most modern server monitoring tools support AWS EC2, Azure VMs, Google Cloud Compute, and other cloud servers, typically via lightweight agents or cloud-provider APIs that pull metrics without requiring direct server access.