The Challenge
In 2005-2009 Carlsberg had undergone explosive IT-infrastructure growth. The company actively acquired new factories and it was consistent to start full-stack IT-infrastructure management system development based on a few local infrustructure projects implemented earlier.
The Solution
The architecture of the solution was designed to ensure fault tolerance of the monitoring system and continuous monitoring of infrastructure components. The system was based on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, and used Savision Live Maps v.2 for visualizing monitoring data for system users and Jalasoft XIAN IO for monitoring Cisco telecommunication equipment and uninterruptible power supplies. The monitoring system was built considering the geography of the company, the required fault tolerance and monitoring functions were implemented for the following components of the IT infrastructure:
- Essential Monolit enterprise management system modules;
- Servers based on MS Windows Server 2003/2008 and applications running on them, such as HP Service Desk 5.1, Lotus Notes, MS SCCM 2007, Quest ActiveRoles, etc.
- Basic network services: Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, WINS;
- HP server hardware, Cisco network equipment, APC uninterruptible power supplies.
The solution visualized collected monitoring data for the system operators, placed it on a map and indicated the branch office to which they related.
Implementing the monitoring system was the next step after the introduction of the PC configuration management system, based on Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007.
The project was continued with integrating a monitoring system with HP Service Desk and NetQos systems, connecting to monitoring storage systems, SAN infrastructure components, and MGE uninterruptible power supply management systems.
The solution was replicable, and management packs created for the project for Monolit, HP Service Desk, Lotus Notes, Quest ActiveRoles systems could be used for other customers projects.
The Result
The monitoring system increased the service employee efficiency particularly for those responsible corporate servers placed in-house or within data centers, and halved the number of calls to the support service.
The same number of IT service team members managing a tripled number of servers also proves the system’s effectiveness.
The system implemented by Carlsberg was set up for monitoring IT infrastructure components of plants and branches of the company in 8 time zones.
Digital Design won the Microsoft Partner of the Year Award in Central and Eastern Europe for the IT infrastructure monitoring system in 2009.