Server Monitoring and Management

Managing a server estate efficiently is a fundamental aspect of any organisations IT security and support function. Despite this, IT staff are often in high demand, engaged on projects and urgent support issues, to give day-to-day tasks the level of attention they deserve.

One of the main contributing factors to a lack of attention is the need for an experienced person to perform critical checks on the server estate manually.

ISC have developed a comprehensive service, bringing together some of the best software available and our own highly trained personnel, to remove this overhead from your internal IT support staff.

From our Network Operations Centre (NOC) we utilise Tivoli server management tools to perform a range of key daily, weekly and bespoke scheduled tasks to ensure your servers are permanently operating at optimum performance. Additionally we receive advanced warning of failures where we take immediate action to resolve; often before your own staff are aware.

The Value to You

• Qualified experienced staff always available
• Always-on monitoring
• No loss of cover for holidays/sickness leave
• Enables your IT staff to focus on other projects
• Proactive error checking
• Clear, concise impartially generated system performance stats
• Accurate and tangible information to inform critical decisions
• Identify performance issues that are difficult to check manually

In addition we can provide information to assist with capacity planning including:

• Application sizing
• Hard disk capacity and upgrades
• Memory utilisation and upgrades
• Processor utilisation/performance and upgrades

How It Works

A Tivoli agent is installed on the server, facilitating a high degree of monitoring, control and exception alerting. These agents are tuned to indicate potential problems which may affect server performance and will alert our NOC staff accordingly. We immediately investigate, attempt to fix remotely & contact you to advise of progress as required.

The service provides the following:

• Monitoring of CPU utilisation, hard disk performance & space, virtual memory, memory and network interface
  
  
• SNMP polling of servers
  Simple Network Management Protocol polls for system status and collects data and information from monitored devices.
  
  
• Microsoft Windows Event Log monitoring
  When an error occurs in any Windows Operating System, event id's are created and sent to the Event Viewer log. A Policy can be created to capture certain events and send them to the Event Console.
  
  
• Monitoring and restarting of Services and Processes
  Sometimes when errors occur, crucial services such as Email can stop. A Policy can be created to restart services, an alert is still sent to the Event console.
  
  
• Remote Control
  This is a remote control session on to the Physical Server.
  
  
• Centralised alerting to the NOC.
  All Alerts and errors that occur are sent to the Event Console.
  
  
• Monthly performance reports including all logged issues

ISC NOC - Key Activities

• Critical Server Patching
  Microsoft Critical Windows Updates are installed monthly.
  Please note patches should not be loaded without engineering backup on site, in case of patch failure. ISC can arrange this where required.
  
  
• Minor software updates
  Application updates & maintenance packs for Backup software.
  
  
• Checking Backup logs
  Open backup software and check backups are complete and free of errors.
  
  
• Periodic custom tasks and system checks
  Ensuring Antivirus Software agents are updating their definition files and Microsoft SQL Server Backup Maintenance Plans have been run correctly.
  
  
• Windows Active Directory Management
  Creation of user accounts & Group Policy Changes.
  
  
• Printer Management
  Adding Network Printers
  
  
• Citrix Administration (where used)
  Publish Desktops, Publish Apps, Printers, Session Resets

Pricing

Notes

• A VPN connection will be required between the ISC NOC and the client network.
• ISC use Cisco PIX firewalls for the VPN, the client will need a suitable device at his network to create the VPN.
• The loading of software agents is included in the setup charge, as is the provision of information to allow the client to configure their own firewall.
• An additional charge is required should we be required to visit the client site and to configure client firewall ourselves. As a guide, we currently charge £400 for this work if the client firewall is Cisco or a brand in which we have technical experience.
• All prices include Tivoli Licencing
• Minimum Contract period 36 months

FAQs

Is it Expensive?

• It would cost you more to do this manually. Over the course of the year, it would take an average of 20 minutes per day per server to complete all monitoring and scheduled tasks.
• This would equate to a gross salary of around £26,000 per year, (or £18,000 per year where we cover 10+ servers).
• Compare this to the cost of a clients own skilled IT staff and the associated costs of employment including vehicles, holiday, sickness, etc... ISC are offering a very cost effective solution in comparison.
• The pricing includes a full Tivoli licence.

We do this internally

• But do you do it every day without fail? And always to the same standard?
• If you want performance monitoring, capacity planning and trend analysis, some form of management tool will need to be loaded.
• Our tools will allow us to provide a lot more benefit than just doing the daily checks.
• By getting us to do the work it allows your key people to focus on projects. 

How does it work?

• Our system will maintain a heartbeat link to all monitored servers that updates every 15 minutes
• A central database located in the ISC Network Operations Centre collates all the information for reporting. This is the key to our service. The central monitoring suite has the data management capability and is extremely expensive to purchase and implement.
• The monitoring station in our Operations Centre has an icon for each server being monitored. When the server is functioning correctly the icon is green. When a threshold is exceeded or there is a problem the system automatically generates an alert and depending on the severity will colour code the alert so the monitoring agent can react accordingly.
• We will log onto the server and where possible fix the error or escalate the issue appropriately
• For clinets with ISC's Server Care, we will also log the call, inform the client and where necessary despatch an engineer with a guaranteed fix.

Can't HP Insight do this?

• No - Insight (or IBM Director) will only monitor the hardware elements of the system. We also check and monitor the software.

Why would someone buy this from ISC?

• We have a team of MSCE qualified consultants providing this service as a dedicated function
• Our systems are permanently connected to our clients servers so we are always aware of any issues the moment they occur
• The service is very cost effective regardless of the number of servers but is especially beneficial for clients with large numbers of servers and remote locations; also for companies without full time internal IT staff.
• For a company to buy and install Tivoli® themselves on, say, 50 servers would cost over £100k just for the infrastructure and installation. This is without having anyone allocated to do the monitoring

Do I have to cover all of my servers?

• No, you can start small and increase the list over time or simply choose to monitor the most business critical servers.

What reports can we send?

• We can provide a report on all the aspects we are monitoring, these typically cover:
  • processor performance and utilisation
  • memory performance and utilisation
  • hard drive performance and utilisation
  • trend analysis on when server will run out of capacity (this is a rolling calculation)
  • server uptime
  • exceptions reporting (telling them all the things that went wrong since the last reporting period - usually a month)

We don't patch all servers all the time

• This is a real security risk - it would be worth the cost of the service just to ensure security software is current.