IT root cause analysis: Discovering the core of a problem

Not so long ago, there were only two ways to keep track of what was happening across a technical platform: install a complicated and pricey framework product or simply sift through the alert logs. Many IT teams still wait for a problem before checking the logs.

Both of these approaches are similar to looking for a needle in a haystack. These days, alerts are marginally better. Nowadays, many monitoring systems are modular, so building large frameworks is unnecessary. Most have traffic light indicators that flash red, amber, and green to let you know when something might be of interest and to filter out most of the false alarms.

What is root cause analysis?

The root cause analysis (RCA) method determines the underlying cause of an observed or experienced incident. An RCA investigates the incident's causal factors, specifically why, how, and when they occurred. An organization will frequently initiate an RCA to determine the root cause of a problem and ensure that it does not occur again.

When a system fails or changes, investigators should conduct an RCA to comprehend the incident and what caused it fully. Root cause analysis goes beyond problem-solving, the corrective action after an incident occurs. On the other hand, an RCA identifies the root cause of a problem.

An RCA is sometimes used to learn more about why a system performs differently from or outperforms similar systems. However, for the most part, the emphasis is on problems, particularly when they affect critical systems.

Pinpointing underlying problems

A monitoring system must be able to detect a problem, investigate its root cause, and notify an administrator—preferably with the ability to auto-remediate the problem where possible as IT environments become more complex, the moving parts of systems increase. This increases the possible causes of problems, such as why an application is running slowly, or certain data is unavailable. Is the issue caused by bad code, a memory leak, or resource constraints? Searching through numerous monitoring systems might make the issue last a very long time. Even worse, steps to repair it may or may not work. What is required is a monitoring system that aggregates event logs from across a platform and then attempts to make sense of it all.

IT root cause analysis

Monitoring and remediation systems are built into many systems management solutions. Artificial intelligence is used in some of these tools. They also provide a more user-friendly interface, eliminating the need for a highly skilled system administrator.

Problems are now frequently indicated by the well-known red, yellow, and green indicators. The user can navigate through the layers to the actual problem by clicking on it, sometimes with suggestions for how to solve the problem or an offer of automatic remediation.

As such capabilities become available, administrators will devote less time to identifying and frequently resolving minor issues. These capabilities should also reduce the number of issues administrators inadvertently introduce while testing something to see if it solves the original problem. Higher uptimes and improved performance will be realized. Furthermore, more time can be spent on adding value to the IT platform.

So, where do we go from here? We should stop looking at alerts and focus more on filtered alerts. The time has come to anticipate the arrival of IT monitoring tools that will bring us closer to actual root cause identification and correction.