Site24x7 provides a telecom data provider with actionable monitoring data

In search of a monitoring solution: Eyes on the system

COURE realized it needed a solution that would constantly feed it information on the status of its infrastructure and services. It wanted a solution that notified it whenever intervention was needed so it could take action quickly.

The company had been using its software’s built-in monitoring tool and scripts created locally by its own programmers. The problem with these was that if the environment went down, so did the monitor. COURE would only know there was a problem when it was not receiving any monitoring data.

COURE realized it needed a monitoring solution that was external to its environment.

An all-in-one monitoring solution: The relief of having everything in one place

As you would expect with a company that is committed to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its clients’ operations, COURE took time to research the top providers, just as it had done when choosing the Zoho One operating system. You can read about COURE’s experience with Zoho One here.

Why did COURE go with Site24x7? Because it was all-encompassing. It could monitor the company’s infrastructure as well as its services. Umoh said it was a relief having a single account where the team had everything it needed in one place.

Data protection: National regulation prevents international hosting

Many of the clients that COURE serves are in the financial services or telecommunications sectors. As a provider of sensitive data, COURE is bound by certain restrictions. These include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Nigeria’s own data protection law, the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR). One stipulation of the NDPR is that COURE has to host its services locally. So it built its own private infrastructure, developing a platform that its clients and partners could use.

Virtual machines: Monitoring for a monolithic system

COURE started off with a Microsoft Hyper-V environment using monolithic architecture. It needed to be able to monitor the virtual machines(VMs) running on each of its servers as well as the services it was running on those VMs. That is when it came across Site24x7. Coincidentally, it was around this time that Umoh joined COURE. As he recalled, “Part of my welcome package was to run a test on Site24x7 to see if it fit our needs as a monitoring solution.”

With the VM monitoring Site24x7 provided, COURE could pick out all the key processes it wished to monitor. It could set the monitoring system to trigger an alert whenever any of its VM processes went down. Site24x7’s network monitors allowed COURE to make sure its interfaces were open. It was also a great help with comparing the bandwidth data from Site24x7’s pollers with the information COURE received from its ISP.

Docker monitoring: Getting rid of the update nightmare

When you run a monolithic system, every update is a nightmare. Umoh said, “Most of the time, things break, and the entire package has to be rolled out, even when the fault was just a minor part.”

That’s why COURE moved to microservices and containerization using Docker. Again, it looked to Site24x7. Although there were a few matters to be ironed out initially, Umoh was impressed with the speed with which Site24x7’s Support and R&D teams worked to achieve the level of Docker monitoring COURE required.

COURE could monitor Docker, its services, and all the key container-level performance metrics within the microsystem. Site24x7’s Docker container logs gave COURE a good understanding of how well its applications were running and greatly helped fix its microservices.

Kubernetes monitoring: Bringing the changes once more

As Umoh put it, COURE has been through generations of changes. With each system change, it has made new asks of Site24x7. Recently, COURE migrated to Kubernetes. It is still early, but Umoh said COURE trusts that Site24x7’s monitoring will be able to meet its expectations, just as Site24x7 did for its monolithic and containerized environments. The way Site24x7 constantly makes improvements is something Umoh wanted to highlight.

Mean time to repair: Detecting international issues

In the past, some of COURE’s clients complained about latency. But with Site24x7’s dual-location availability, COURE receives monitors from different parts of the world. This gives it a better perspective of a client’s actual user experience.

Site24x7 also allows COURE to identify whether an issue is local or transcontinental.

For example, when subsea fiber-optic cables for some of COURE’s major internet providers were broken, its clients in Nigeria were unaffected. But international clients, particularly those in the US, were unable to access its services. Site24x7 detected the issue. COURE has now built redundancy into its system. If one of its major ISPs has a problem, it can switch its servers to route over another one.

Return on investment: Information COURE needs, at its fingertips

What sort of return on investment has COURE seen? Umoh said he could only speak for the technical side, but affirmed that having Site24x7 and knowing he and his colleagues are getting the information they need at their fingertips is well worth the price.

Meeting SLAs: Reducing the time it takes to detect issues

One of the difficulties in meeting SLAs is not having control over your environment. No matter how careful and precise you are, issues can occur, and services will go down at some point. How you get ahead is by being able to detect issues early so you can fix them quickly and increase your uptime.

That is what Site24x7 gives COURE. It also allows the company to compare its performance across different environments, such as Windows and Linux. It gives COURE the ability to make changes based on data Site24x7 collects over time. Umoh said it is no longer a question of the time it takes to detect issues, but simply the time it takes to fix issues.