How a Multinational Software Company Streamlined Network Monitoring and Improved Visibility with Progress Infrastructure Management Tools
Industries:
Technology and SoftwareChallenge
The organization’s IT team had trouble maintaining its custom-built network monitoring stack, facing issues with configuring new devices and extending its capabilities across the organization.
Solution
- Deploy Progress® WhatsUp® Gold as a more user friendly, singular network monitoring solution
- Track CPU, memory and interface utilization across switches, routers, firewalls and more in real-time
- Analyze network traffic with Progress® Flowmon® dashboard filtering capabilities
Result
- Faster troubleshooting through configuration comparison and real-time visibility
- Greater insights into device health during network traffic bursts and cyber incidents
- Reduce dependency on custom tools and single-administrator knowledge
Full Story
Challenge
For a long time, the IT team at a multinational software company didn’t have a formal network monitoring solution in place. That alone is a significant hurdle to jump over. It wasn’t until their Senior Network Administrator came onboard and worked with the team to deploy a 100% customized network monitoring platform, which was an Ubutnu server running Prometheus, SNMP blockers, various pollers and other components. It proved to be effective in getting views into environments, but later the cons outweighed the pros.
The custom-built solution was difficult to use. Since it was an amalgamation of numerous different tools and features, there was a steep learning curve for new IT team members. The Senior Network Administrator found himself to be the only “power user” of the solution, which took time away from his tasks. Another issue came from maintaining and extending it across the organization’s environments. It required deep technical expertise to manually configure new network gear and adding network pollers.
The team needed a new, easy-to-use solution and one that would provide the team with deep infrastructure insights.
I needed a more reliable stack that could be managed without me… trying WhatsUp Gold and Flowmon was a no-brainer and my favorite decision so far.
Senior Network Administrator
Multinational Software Company
Solution
The Senior Network Administrator learned about the Progress WhatsUp Gold network monitoring solution after seeing a YouTuber cover its capabilities.
“I needed a more reliable stack that could be managed without me,” said the Administrator. “I had heard a lot about WhatsUp Gold through a Network Chuck-sponsored video and had completed his lab operation using the free licenses.”
The idea was to deploy a single solution that could be managed beyond a single administrator. It was also a plus for the team to have a network monitoring platform that was user-friendly enough for the whole team to use. The Administrator and his team wanted to have precise views into CPU, memory and interface utilization across devices. WhatsUp Gold monitoring enabled the team to focus on monitoring the company’s numerous switches, routers, firewalls and its VMware vCenter environments.
The WhatsUp Gold solution isn’t the only tool in their arsenal; the organization is utilizing an additional infrastructure solution with Progress Flowmon network insights. Their deployment of these two infrastructure solutions has reduced several challenges the IT faced. The team is using it to get a closer look into traffic bursts.
Result
The organization is now receiving greater insights into device health during traffic surges and when outages are about to occur. But, for the Administrator, a real benefit comes from the ability to troubleshoot faster with real-time network visibility and configuration comparison. For instance, the team had a network tunnel go down, and the Administrator was using the dashboards as a way to gain a more holistic view into the infrastructure.
“The compare feature immediately helped me resolve an issue by simply copying and pasting the difference,” said the Senior Network Administrator. “I now know all the CPU levels of every device at any given moment, giving me correlational health in the moment during big burst. With the interface utilization graph, I can see utilization everywhere, very quickly.”
With a reduced dependency on custom tooling, the team can all use the WhatsUp Gold and Flowmon solutions. Most importantly, they can do it without having to tap the Admin on the shoulder for help.
As for what’s to come for the Admin and their team? Based on the overall positive experience in using the WhatsUp Gold and Flowmon solutions, there are plans to deploy a similar setup across their other data centers in the United States, with further exploration in the works to optimize traffic flows and explore more of WhatsUp Gold’s NTA+ capabilities.
The compare feature immediately helped me resolve an issue by simply copying and pasting the difference. And with the interface utilization graph, I can see utilization everywhere, very quickly.
Senior Network Administrator
Multinational Software Company