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Monitoring & Maintenance - The Importance of Managing your IT Infrastructure

12 Dec 2025, by Micron21

While public cloud services promised scalability and ease, many organisations are rediscovering the value of running their own IT infrastructure - whether on-premises or in a private cloud environment.  This shift isn't just about nostalgia for physical servers - it's a strategic move driven by cost efficiencies, enhanced security, and greater operational autonomy.  However, with great control comes great responsibility – in this case, the responsibility to safeguard your operations.  

At Micron21, we've excitedly seen countless clients thrive by embracing self-managed IT setups.  But their success hinges on proactive oversight.  In this article, we'll explore why owning your infrastructure matters, the growing trend of cloud repatriation, and how having effective, robust monitoring & maintenance practices in place ensures that your infrastructure remains visible, secure, and performant.

The Advantages of Running Your Own IT Infrastructure

Opting for your own IT infrastructure - be it dedicated servers, colocation, or a private cloud - offers unparalleled advantages over relying solely on public cloud providers.  At the top of the list is transparency and control over your assets.  You know exactly where your hardware resides, whether it's in a secure Australian data centre or a custom on-premises rack.  This eliminates the "black box" uncertainty of public clouds, where data might traverse global networks without your direct oversight.

The other key benefits of owning your own IT infrastructure is that it gives you flexibility as well as provider choice.  This is because with self-managed infrastructure, you're not locked into a single vendor's ecosystem.  You can select hardware tailored to your workloads - high-performance GPUs for AI tasks, or energy-efficient servers for steady-state applications.   And if your needs evolve, you’re able to switch providers easily, without the vendor lock-in that plagues many public cloud migrations.

Configuration and security customisation further empower you to align systems with your exact requirements.  You can implement bespoke firewalls, encryption protocols, or compliance frameworks, like ISO 27001, without navigating a provider's one-size-fits-all policies.  This is especially vital for industries handling sensitive data, such as finance or healthcare, where regulatory adherence is non-negotiable.

Finally, policy compliance becomes straightforward.  Running your own setup lets you enforce internal governance directly, from access controls to audit trails, reducing the risk of third-party breaches or misconfigurations that could lead to fines or reputational damage.

These perks aren't just theoretical - they are the reasons why forward-thinking businesses, that want to future-proof their operations, invest in private infrastructure.

The Shift from Public Cloud to Private: A Cost-Driven Revolution

For years, public clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud lured organisations with promises of pay-as-you-go convenience.  But as workloads scaled, so did their bills - often unexpectedly.  Enter the era of cloud repatriation: the strategic migration of workloads back to private clouds or on-premises environments.  This trend, which accelerated in 2024 and 2025, is largely fuelled by spiralling costs that public clouds can impose through egress fees, data transfer charges, and inefficient resource utilisation.

Recent surveys paint a clear picture.  According to the Barclays CIO Survey from late 2024, 83% of enterprises intended to move workloads back to private clouds, a sentiment echoed by Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell who commented on what he called a “boomerang and repatriation effect”. IDC's (International Data Corporation) 2024 Cloud Pulse survey reinforces this, with 70% of enterprises shifting to hybrid or on-premises models to combat unexpected overruns - nearly half of cloud users reported cost surprises, and 59% anticipated more to come.

Experts predict this momentum will continue into 2026. Forrester - a research and advisory firm - anticipates major public cloud providers ramping up private cloud investments, while alternatives like Nutanix and OpenStack gain traction amid VMware's pricing controversies.  As one analyst noted, organisations are "under pressure for optimization," reevaluating public cloud spends to avoid devaluing their IT investments. The result? A hybrid future where private infrastructure handles cost-sensitive, predictable workloads, freeing public clouds for bursty innovation.

Monitoring: Gaining Visibility to Stay Ahead

While the allure of private infrastructure is strong, its true potential unlocks only with full visibility.  Without it, even the most robust setup can falter under unseen threats like hardware failures, traffic spikes, or emerging vulnerabilities.  That's why this month, we're spotlighting the critical role monitoring has in IT management.

Monitoring isn't just about watching dashboards - it's about empowering proactive decision-making.  Modern tools can track an expansive array of metrics across your infrastructure:

  • Performance indicators: CPU/memory usage, disk I/O, and network latency to ensure smooth application delivery.
  • Security events: Intrusion attempts, anomalous logins, and compliance drifts.
  • Resource utilisation: Storage thresholds, bandwidth consumption, and energy efficiency.
  • Uptime and availability: Server health, failover status, and SLA adherence.
  • Application-specific metrics: Database query times, API response rates, or custom business KPIs.

The real game-changer? Configured alerts. These notify you instantly - or even predictively - when issues arise or loom.

This visibility over your infrastructure delivers tangible benefits:

  • Capacity management: Scale resources preemptively, avoiding bottlenecks during peak seasons. So no more scrambling to provision servers midst the Black Friday rush, etc.
  • Rapid issue response: Get alerted by your systems, not irate clients. This not only minimises downtime (potentially saving thousands per hour) but positions you as proactive - resolving problems before they negatively impact  your brand’s reputation.
  • Preventive issue detection: Threshold-based alerts catch brewing storms, like gradual memory leaks or rising error rates, letting you intervene early and sidestep outages entirely.

In short, monitoring transforms reactive firefighting into strategic foresight, keeping your infrastructure resilient in an unpredictable world.

Maintaining Your Infrastructure: Keeping it Secure and Current

Visibility is half the battle. The other is maintenance – which is the disciplined practice of keeping systems patched, optimised, and secure. Neglect it, and even the best hardware becomes a liability.

Maintenance schedules form the backbone of this effort, typically following a rhythmic cadence: monthly for standard systems, and weekly (or bi-weekly) for mission-critical ones like payment gateways. A comprehensive schedule might encompass:

  • Patch management: Applying OS, software, and firmware updates to seal known vulnerabilities.
  • Vulnerability scanning: Automated tools like Nessus or OpenVAS to identify weaknesses in real-time.
  • Penetration testing: Simulated attacks by ethical hackers to expose and fortify entry points.
  • Performance tuning and reporting: Analysing logs, optimising configurations, and generating compliance reports.
  • Backup verification and disaster recovery drills: Ensuring data integrity and failover readiness.

Many organisations often outsource this work to external specialists (such as Micron21) who bring expertise in tailored plans without the overhead of building an internal team.

Timing is everything, especially for patches. Routine updates can wait for off-peak windows, but zero-day exploits demand urgency – as attackers pounce within hours, as was seen in high-profile breaches like Log4Shell and the more recent React2Shell. We recommend any provider agreement includes provisions for as-needed urgent interventions, ensuring fixes deploy swiftly without disrupting operations.

Other Things to Keep in Mind: Beyond the Obvious

Don't stop at cloud or server maintenance - your entire ecosystem needs attention. Firmware patching is a common blind spot -  vulnerabilities lurk in routers, switches, firewalls, printers, NAS devices, and even UPS units.  These rarely auto-update, yet they represent prime attack vectors – as a compromised router could expose your whole network.

Similarly, applications can falter silently. Corrupted installers, permission glitches, or service failures might halt updates, leaving "patched" software exposed. Regular audits ensure nothing slips through.

Remember, all assets - cloud-based, on-premises, or hybrid - must integrate into your plan. A holistic approach mitigates risks across the board.

Ready to Strengthen Your IT Foundations?

Running your own infrastructure offers freedom and efficiency, but only if backed by vigilant monitoring and maintenance.   At Micron21, we're here to help you build and sustain a rock-solid setup, from custom private clouds right through to expert-managed services.

Have questions about monitoring and maintaining your hardware?  Contact us today on 1300 769 972 (Option #1 for Sales) or email sales@micron21.com.  Let's keep your IT infrastructure not just running, but thriving.

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