Originally published on October 24, 2022 by Michael Becker
Last updated on January 23, 2024
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7 minute read
Paessler PRTG is well known as a monitoring solution for IT network infrastructures of all sizes and provides IT administrators with a holistic view of the overall enterprise IT. But it can also contribute to increasing the transparency of IT services, something that is becoming more important with growing complexity of IT delivery options. This example shows how PRTG together with KnowledgeRiver's data control utility DC360Ocean helped an international bank in UAE shine a light on their IT services.
The initial situation
The IT department of the bank was looking for a monitoring solution to keep track of the availability of the IT systems. Especially in focus were the availability of the DevOps servers and their log directories. The aim was to protect the DevOps IT services availability and to increase the performance of the individual servers. Therefore, the plan was to gather information about files of the individual log directories and to run an automated clean-up based on defined dates or file sizes.
In addition, the idea was to use the data of system support packages to compare them against predefined parameters. An automatically generated detailed report with recommendations and instructions was needed to guide the IT operations team to improve IT services availability.
The implementation
After installation and basic configuration of Paessler PRTG and KnowledgeRiver's DC360Ocean platform within the client's IT environment, 10 servers were connected to collect the needed data. The gathered data was subsequently stored directly in the so-called "Data Lake" of DC360Ocean. Additionally, the information from the support packages of the systems were read out at regular, time-defined intervals and also stored there. The activated DC360Ocean analysis function now had the following tasks:
- Monitor the DevOps log directories of the individual servers and perform actions depending on the fill level
- Monitor the validity of certificates read from the support packages and send a notification if they were valid for less than one month.
About DC360Ocean
KnowledgeRiver is a technological IT partner of Paessler with the commitment to bring high availability, transparency and efficiency to existing IT environments. The central point for the realization of the project is KnowledgeRiver's DC360Ocean - an IT knowledge platform that can integrate with PRTG. In its basic configuration, it provides a visualization of the IT environment as well as a generic analysis of the IT components. This automation allows current vulnerabilities and inconsistencies to be automatically detected and provided as reports.
PRTG gathers comprehensive monitoring data from all relevant sources and stores it without aggregation. Using PRTG’s built-in REST API, the KnowledgeRiver tools retrieve and process monitoring data and correlate with information from other sources.
Summary
Nowadays, IT services are indispensable for companies. One of the core tasks of any IT team is to ensure the availability and performance of IT services. In this project, the implementation of Paessler's PRTG and KnowledgeRiver's DC360Ocean was realized within 2 days. By monitoring and automating the cleanup of the log directories in the DevOps environment, the performance of the individual servers was increased significantly. Thanks to PRTG's multiple notification options, the IT team receives early information about when certificates lose their validity and can thus replace them in time.
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