This guide was written to introduce monitoring to someone who’s familiar with computers and IT in general, but not with monitoring as a discipline. As such, (almost) no former knowledge or experience is required to delve into this document. If you already have experience with monitoring, this may not be the book for you. Then again, it couldn’t hurt.
This guide is completely tool-agnostic. While the author has decades of experience with a wide variety of monitoring solutions, those experiences were only used to provide insight into general trends and techniques. Nothing in this document will prepare you specifically to dive into monitoring using software package XYZ. But, I hope after reading this, when you do start using monitoring software XYZ, some of the functions will be less arcane, and you’ll be able to say “Oh, I know why they’re asking me about that option.”