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Monitoring IoT devices

In the Machine Shop

Article from ADMIN 89/2025

By Lothar Burger

Keeping track of a large number of Internet of Things devices means understanding IoT networks, developing suitable monitoring metrics, and (ideally) integrating the IoT with infrastructure monitoring.

When IT teams set out to monitor the Internet of Things (IoT), they too often settle for situations where, say, a networked sensor sends plausible measurements at an expected interval, which unfortunately means that admins could be overlooking critical scenarios. For example, the device could be repeatedly rebooting, which could mean a hardware failure in the making or that the battery charge is dropping rapidly because of the numerous reboots. Finally, operations managers could miss a device's unusual communication volume, indicating that it is not just communicating with the application in the back end as intended but is also carrying out attacks against external websites as part of a botnet.

The IT world at the edge and in the back end is networked over IP and can be monitored with the familiar methods and tools of classic IT monitoring, which is why I focus in this article on monitoring devices and their connectivity. However, IT and IoT do not need to be separate monitoring silos; instead, consolidating the monitoring data from both worlds on an observability platform makes sense to achieve a holistic view of the IoT system and its components.

Understanding IoT Networks

Figure 1 shows the typical structure of an IoT system comprising three layers: devices, the edge, and the back end. The layers are connected by networks. The applications on the devices communicate with applications in the back end or on edge servers. Edge servers enable the processing of IoT data and storage of the data close to its place of generation.

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