You can monitor a SharePoint farm at three different levels: server, site and site collection, and service application. Each level has specific monitoring requirements. To monitor the farm, you must monitor all three levels.

• The server level

  The server level contains all of the servers, such as web servers, application servers, and database servers, that comprise the SharePoint farm.

• The site and site collection level

  The site and site collection level contains all sites and site collections in the farm.

• The service application level

  The service application level contains all service applications that are contained in, or used by, the farm.

You can monitor a SharePoint farm by using the following:

• The SharePoint Central Administration website

  From Central Administration, you can configure diagnostic logging, and usage and health data collection. You can view problems and solutions from Health Analyzer. In addition, SharePoint 2013 generates administrative reports and health reports for you to analyze health data. For more information, see Configure usage and health data collection in SharePoint 2013, View reports and logs in SharePoint 2013, and Configure diagnostic logging in SharePoint 2013.

• Windows PowerShell

  You can use Windows PowerShell to view diagnostic logs. For more information, see View diagnostic logs in SharePoint 2013.

• Logs

  Use Event Viewer to view system logs. For more information, see Event Viewer.

  You can check Unified Logging Service (ULS) logs for troubleshooting. For more information, see ULS Viewer, for SharePoint 2010 Troubleshooting. This information for SharePoint 2010 also applies to SharePoint 2013.

• System Center 2012 - Operations Manager with System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2013

  You can use Operations Manager and System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2013 to monitor the health status of a SharePoint farm. It lets you monitor services, devices, and operations for many computers in a single console. For more information, see Operations Manager, and System Center Monitoring Pack for SharePoint Server 2013 or System Center Monitoring Pack for SharePoint Foundation 2013.

  You can use Network Load Balancing (NLB) to enhance the scalability and availability of server applications when you use System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2013. For more information, see Network Load Balancing.

A large SharePoint deployment may have more than one farm. In this case, you can use Operations Manager and System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2013 to monitor multiple farms. For more information, see SharePoint 2010 Multi-Farm Monitoring. This information for SharePoint 2010 also applies to SharePoint 2013.