Choosing between Deployment Models of IT Monitoring Solutions: SaaS or On-Premises

What are the deployment models for eG Enterprise: SaaS/Cloud or on-premises?

You have two choices when deploying eG Enterprise:

1. You can choose to use eG Enterprise as a fully hosted SaaS offering, removing the need for you to invest in infrastructure and host the monitoring manager. Many organizations use our SaaS offering because the management server and database are hosted by us. Customers have access to make any changes they need to configure, administer and monitor their systems, and do not have the hassle of managing and administering the systems used for eG Enterprise.
2. Alternatively, you can deploy eG Enterprise yourself wherever you want: on-premises on your own servers, on public cloud, on a FedRAMP regulated cloud, or on a private cloud or other. In this model, you have full control over the manager and agents and no data leaves your infrastructure. Many of our customers in certain sectors, such as finance, healthcare, and government prefer to opt for a traditional fully on-premises solution. There are plenty of case studies covering specific industries on our case study page.

Wherever you choose to locate your eG Manager, eG Enterprise does not and will never collect data from your systems. There is never a data feed going from eG Manager to any outside system unless specifically configured by the customer and we do not incorporate any dubious call-home technologies.

Before installing eG Enterprise, you will also need to consider the factors discussed in the Where to locate the eG Manager? guide to decide the exact location where the eG manager should be installed in your environment for optimized performance at scale.

What about security of the monitoring architecture?

An eG Enterprise deployment is secure yet hassle-free and does not require extensive policy and firewall reconfigurations to collect and communicate metrics. As it uses standard web protocols (HTTP/HTTPS) for all communications, eG Enterprise allows monitoring of servers that are deployed within a private network or in the public cloud. As long as the agent has connectivity to the management system using HTTP/HTTPS, monitoring can be started immediately. No additional firewall rules need to be configured.

Security and failover reliance are, of course, paramount and you can find out more about how we ensure secure and resistant communication between the eG Manager and eG Agents in our recent blog covering port security, here (which covers how we fully support authenticated proxy connections for agents that are required to connect to an external network, utilize TLS 1.2, or higher encryption, and similar features).

Where is the eG SaaS offering located?

eG Enterprise Cloud is a fully-hosted web-based IT monitoring service that provides IT teams with the simplicity and power of their applications and IT infrastructures from the cloud. From a single pane of glass, monitor any application, any server, anywhere.

Hosted on Amazon’s AWS Cloud, it is easy to get started with eG Enterprise Cloud and you will not have to worry about deploying, maintaining, and upgrading an on-going monitoring system. Just sign up for the eG Enterprise Cloud service to try our AIOps platform on the cloud for all your business-critical applications and IT infrastructure. You can read more about AWS (Amazon Web Services) Security and Compliance models and commitments in their Security and Compliance Overview. Because eG’s SaaS offering is hosted in the AWS cloud, it benefits from Amazon’s secure, world-class data centers, which are certified for ISO 27001, PCI-DSS Level 1, and SOC 1 / SSAE 16.

Our SaaS offerings are currently available in several geographic AWS regions, including Australia, Singapore, Europe (Germany), and USA; enabling customers to comply with government and industry regulatory requirements, such as the European GDPR, and the Australian Privacy Act. All data is secured within the customers’ AWS region of choice. Additionally, eG Innovations maintains local offices and staff in all our SaaS regions to ensure that we can provide consultancy, training, and support within region and onsite, if necessary.

Is eG Enterprise multi-tenant and can a managed service provider (MSP) use it in this mode?

Yes, eG Enterprise has multi-tenancy support. An MSP can install the monitoring software in a multi-tenant model, wherein their customers can self-register to the portal, download, and install agents and start monitoring their infrastructure by themselves. The MSP admins do not have to get involved for any configuration.

Figure 1 below shows the MSP-friendly architecture of eG Enterprise. eG Enterprise is completely scalable, and future-proofed for any size and any type of IT environments. Role-based access and personalized views enable eG Enterprise to support multi-tenancy. Multiple admins in an organization can get access to the monitoring console showing systems and services being monitored by the organization and respond to alerts. Figure 1 below depicts how eG Enterprise is deployed by MSPs. Even though the manager uses a common database, administrators of one tenant cannot access the data or the monitoring console of another tenant. Authentication of logons can be done using SSO, SAML, or Active Directory (AD) integration. Audit logs in eG Enterprise help MSPs track all the activities of their tenants.

Multi-tenancy support is especially useful for MSPs support small to medium customers. MSPs can amortize the cost of the manager and database systems across several customers.

Is eG Enterprise SaaS only offered in a multi-tenant mode?

No – if a customer needs to have a dedicated eG manager, for compliance reasons, or to deal with scale of their environment, or because they require a higher grade of security, we support a dedicated SaaS configuration as well. The manager and database are sized to meet the needs of the customer.

Can an on-premises deployment be used to support multiple geographic locations?

Yes, an on-premises deployment can support multiple geographic locations. Agents/agentless monitors from each location communicate with a central management server. Administrators in each location can be assigned personalized views in keeping with their roles and responsibilities in the organization.

Figure 2 below shows an on-premises deployment supporting multiple locations.

When the eG manager is deployed on the cloud, can it be used to monitor on-premises servers and applications?

Yes, certainly. This is the mode in which most MSPs use our solution. They support multiple customers using the same management server. Agents/agentless monitors from different customer sites communicate with the management server and report performance metrics. Administrators can login from anywhere and access the monitoring console, view alerts, access reports, etc. Note that in Figure 3, communications from agents deployed within the customer infrastructure are based on outbound HTTP/S communications, so there is no need to open ports from the cloud to the customer infrastructure. This makes the deployment very simple and easy to do without significant changes in the customer infrastructure.

Further information:

• Read more about our security model here.
• More information on our solutions for MSPs hosting multi-tenant environments is available on our MSP Solutions page.
• Read a case study on how GlassHouse uses eG’s SaaS offering on AWS to monitor and manage Citrix Apps and Desktops for multiple tenants  at scale.

About the Author:

Hong Kui Zhang is a Technical Sales Manager, who provides support and consultancy to our customers and team in the APAC region from our Singapore HQ.