How To: Troubleshoot Using RMM

Remote Monitoring and Management – if you are managing a large number of endpoint devices, and have made promises to keep infrastructure running, this is one of your most vital tools, and one that your clients expect you to use well.

There are many great features of RMM that you depend on each day:

• • • deployment and scripting
    • alerting
    • ticket interfacing
    • asset management
    • licensing

In this post I want to highlight only one – How to use RMM effectively when diagnosing and troubleshooting issues.

The zebra effect

Great technical investigation, specifically in urgent issues, involves getting to root cause as efficiently as possible. An ex-colleague of mine liked to quote the phrase made popular in 50s Medical Teaching. “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras!”. As techs, we love to jump to the rare and unexpected diagnosis first, it’s way more fun. However, the cause of an issue is likely to be common and simple, and if you find yourself diving into scripting powershell, before you’ve even checked OS version, or uninstalling applications before checking disk space, you just fell into the zebra trap!

An RMM serving up simple performance details of devices can very quickly bring the horses into focus.

What you need, where you need it

When it comes to documentation for troubleshooting, one of the keys is having all the information you need ‘at your fingertips’. In our ever-more-complex world with multiple sources, multiple technologies, and multiple standards, let alone multiple teams and personalities, the information you need naturally spreads out. We know you want to link it all together and rely on it, and IT Glue’s integration with your RMM platform is going to do just that.

When troubleshooting under-performing applications and services, one of the first things to identify is the devices involved in presenting those apps to the end users. When you click through to those devices (configurations), our goal is to provide you the right level of accurate information to answer your first questions, without bombarding you with zebra-like detail that are not relevant (yet!).

• • • Hostname and IP
    • Gateway
    • OS
    • CPU and RAM
    • Last login
    • Disk Space
    • Patching status

Because this information was provided recently by those devices directly into the configuration record, via your RMM agents, you can rely on its accuracy and either quickly identify an issue, or remove some theories from your enquiries.

Imagine you have an impatient software developer helping you troubleshoot on the phone – he’s reading off specification requirements for their software to run. “Yes, I can confirm there is a Xeon E5 dual core, 48GB RAM and 200GB disk, hardware spec is not the issue here”.

Imagine you have a frantic COO whose email system has just ground to a halt. “Yes, I can see we have just hit data capacity on the main storage, we will need to move and delete some data, and can have you up and running within 20 minutes”.

Straight from the horse’s mouth

What is the most accurate source of information about a device’s specifications and capacity? The device itself. This is why RMM data is so vital to your documentation. You get accurate data straight from the horse’s mouth. Once you’ve established that everything looks good on the surface, the summary statistics are looking healthy, it’s time to use that RMM to connect up to the device and dig deeper.

One click from the Configuration in IT Glue opens up the device in your RMM console and you can watch CPU performance live, another click and you’re logging in to a remote session. If you’re partnered with us, it’s time to get your RMM hooked up to IT Glue. Click here for details on how to integrate.

RMM PSA or both?

If you’re currently subscribed to our basic data plan, you have the option to integrate with one data source, this can be either PSA or RMM. Wanting the best of both worlds? Simply switch plans to Select, and we’ve got you covered. Click here for details on plans.