In this chapter, we discussed the various approaches to network management that span across the service management lifecycle, with a focus on the network operations. We discussed the various elements of an effective network management and operations strategy and discussed the various configurations required to monitor the network for delivering the services with the designed SLAs. We ended the chapter with a broad list of best practices that can help improve the NOC operations of an organization.
In spite of all the best practices, outages will happen and services will be degraded. In the next chapter, we will discuss the various troubleshooting tools and technologies and provide an approach for troubleshooting common problems in an IT environment.