In Their Words
Steven D. Duckworth is the Assistant Director for Network Services at Augusta State University. We asked him to write in about his experiences with AutoNOC and network management in general and here is what he responded:

"I have been employed at Augusta State University for 12 years. I received my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from ASU in 1992. In my 12 years at the University, I have seen a lot of change. We have gone from a single person operation in 1992 to the current 4 person network crew in 2003. Over the years, our network has grown considerably and with that so has the complexity. As more and more people rely on the network to be available, it has become very important to proactively monitor our campus network."

"We started using network management tools back in 1995. Spectrum was our product of choice and it worked well for many years. As the years went by and our staff grew, the cost of the product and its complexity made us start to reconsider management platforms. In 2001, we started evaluating the current network management offerings including What’s Up Gold, HP Openview, Netcool and many others. Although each product was good, we always felt like something was missing. Then we discovered AutoNOC. It was still in the version 1.0 stages of development, but already contained the maturity of a product that had been around many years. The ease in which it gave us total vision into our network was just what we were looking for. We were sold on the product and purchased a license not long after."

"AutoNOC has helped us gain total visibility into our network. It helps us to keep our helpdesk informed of current alarms and allows them to intelligently discuss current problems with helpdesk callers. We now have baselines of network performance and can easily see any deviance from these norms. When people say: “It must have been a network problem.” we have the statistics to prove or disprove their statements. We have performance data which helps justify the cost of upgrading network equipment. It has really helped us make some significant enhancements to our network infrastructure and upgrade the most needed areas. As easy as the product is to use, I can teach someone to monitor our network in less than 15 minutes. With all these benefits AutoNOC has to offer, it has become the glue that holds our network together."

Steven's Design
We decided to present Steven's model design as a great example of an end user network operations model that monitors components of buildings, departments, server rooms, and core infrastructure throughout a university campus.

Steven needed to be able to monitor Cisco, Windows, Unix, Hewlett-Packard, Linux, and many other types of hardware and software services from a single console. He was looking for a management vendor that would support whatever hardware or software Augusta State decided to buy. He wanted an easy to use, reliable, and cost effective management package.

The following map of Augusta State's campus shows what Steven was working with in terms of the facilities and departments that he needed to manage:

Steven added all of the universities core devices to AutoNOC (which began monitoring the components of each device). He then designed approximately 25 object sets to consolidate groups of devices, interfaces, storage, and other key components of their network. He used the convenient web GUI to create a single screen from which he can see everything that happens on the network. The following screenshot shows Steven's favorite screen which breaks the network down the way he wanted to see everything:

Steven's model included sets for devices and components in all of the University's major buildings. He also added several key departments and broke down Augusta State's core infrastructure by vendor and by role.

If anything happens on the network to any hard drive, CPU, interface, connection, link, application, or core service, the software detects it within 60 seconds or less and the related set object goes red on the screen (and optionally fires off alerts). The user then needs to simply click on the object that turned red and drill down to specifically see the issue, including any related issues. As you can see from the picture above, Steven's network was humming along quite well when the screenshot was taken. When problems occur, the model goes out of ideal, and AutoNOC is able to quickly discern what is happening.

In a very cost effective manner, AutoNOC has helped Augusta State to see everything happening in their network live and in real-time. The infinite histories enable Augusta State staff to actually go back in time to see what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and what it effected. This increased understanding of the inside of the network makes it much faster to detect and troubleshoot both simple and complex network and systems problems.

"Steven's model is a great example of AutoNOC helping to increase network availability, performance, and end user satisfaction levels while simultaneously reducing the number of problem tickets (user phone calls), time to respond, and overall cost of delivering services." says Kyle Lussier, President and CEO of AutoNOC LLC.