Vodafone Information Systems Combines IPCheck with Tivoli

Company Profile

The Mannesmann Data Processing has been in place since 1971 to centralize the various data centers of the Mannesmann corporate group. This competence center operates and controls all IT-relevant processes of this global company. Since Mannesmann was taken over by Vodafone in 2000, Mannesmann Data Processing turned to Vodafone Information Systems, which supplies IT-Services to the Vodafone group. The data center services of Vodafone IS comprise the planning, integration, and operation of sustainable IT-solutions in one of the biggest data centers in Europe, which was the first German data center that got the highest security certification of the British Standards Institution.

Challenge

In Ratingen 280 employees operate about 1,000 HP-UX, Sun-Solaris and Windows XP servers with a data flow of more than 1,100 TByte. To guarantee high-performance and secure data management Vodafone uses IS EMC storage arrays. A daily data backup is being performed with NetBackup onto StorageTek tape robots. There are also various data base systems as well as many different applications and web services that Vodafone IS is operating for its customers.

To be able to offer its customers a 99% availability of the IT- Infrastructure and the business processes Vodafone needed a monitoring solution that kept track of the IT-landscape in a reliable way. The solution also needed to immediately inform the technicians in charge in case of a system breakdown so they can solve the problem promptly.

Since Vodafone IS is doing hosting and operation of web applications beside the pure hardware outsourcing for its customers it is not sufficient to just guarantee the hardware availability. With a webshop it’s absolutely necessary to have a continously accessible website. Opting for a suitable monitoring software the customer turned its attention especially to internal requirements on already existing systems. The present TIVOLI-environment had to be completed by a simple and low-priced solution for active monitoring on port-level. The software also needed to be flexible and easy to install as well as easy to integrate into the TIVOLI-environment. Another requirement was the ability to monitor web-services and to make a monitoring with TIVOLI possible.

Solution Requirements:

• Integration into existing TIVOLI-environment
• Easy to install
• Easy to use
• Low-priced

In the end, Vodafone IS opted for IPCheck Server Monitor from Paessler. “It’s not only that IPCheck Server Monitor completely meets our demands as monitoring software”, says Dr. Joachim Fritz, project manager with Vodafone IS. “In addition, we really appreciate the extremely quick and competent Paessler Support. Since with such an IT-landscape you usually need small adjustments from time to time, this good experience with the support tipped the scales for the Paessler tool.”

Solution

In order to adhere to the high service level agreements internally as well as towards external customers, Vodafone uses more than just one monitoring tool. TIVOLI Enterprise Console is the central management tool covering all systems. The transaction time of business processes is being measured by Mercury´s software for service level management “Topaz” and forwarded to TIVOLI. For the active monitoring they use IPCheck Server Monitor from Paessler. Among other things IPCheck Server Monitor covers the Port Ping and the web service monitoring.

The monitoring outcome of both tools are being forwarded to TIVOLI´s Enterprise Console by the NT Log-File Adapter.

In case of any failure TIVOLI activates the generation of a trouble ticket. The trouble ticket management is carried out by Remedy. Vodafone depicts the adherence of the service level agreements on a web portal with a self-made solution.

Customer Benefit

By combining different monitoring solutions Vodafone IS makes sure that a multitude of parameters can be monitored which is why a quick reaction to failures and trouble shooting is possible without any customer noticing a breakdown. This is the only way to permanently guarantee a 99% availability of such a complex IT-environment.

“IPCheck Server Monitoring gives us an advanced sight in first level support and provides a proactive monitoring”, says Dr. Joachim Fritz. “We also receive detailed information on server performance and historical data. The functionality of IPCheck Server Monitor is pretty impressive, especially if you consider the ease of installation. Our daily experience is more than satisfying, IPCheck Server Monitor operates steadily and without any problems.”