XDx installed a CC-NOC 250 to monitor the network equipment residing in the company's two buildings in South San Francisco, as well as in two labs -- its research and development lab and a commercial lab where testing is conducted. Among the systems CC-NOC monitors are e-mail, Web, DNS and database servers; switches; phone equipment; routers; and firewalls. Sysix Companies, a Raritan Reseller, provided the CC-NOC.
According to XDx IT Director Gio Hernandez, "CC-NOC 250 provides all the tools in one integrated place to monitor all of XDx's critical systems and network components. From one dashboard, we are able to see everything at a 10,000-foot view; I can, at a glance, see that everything is running well and 100 percent available. It also enables me to drill down to see specific detailed performance information."
If there are intrusions, vulnerabilities or performance problems, alerts are sent to XDx's IT staff via wireless e-mail. Hernandez and his team are able to take care of issues before they get calls from employees or customers regarding service degradation.
"We wanted to be able to monitor the heartbeats of our critical systems, servers and network," said Hernandez. "The NOC 250 provides all the key functions that we need in one dedicated appliance. Having the CC-NOC has given me peace of mind, knowing that the system is monitoring our IT infrastructure and that, if there are any issues, I will be alerted and be able to react immediately."
XDx also likes the reports that CC-NOC generates, including reports on intrusion detections, network performance, system performance and asset inventory -- which also captures hardware and software additions, removals and changes. XDx also uses CC-NOC's Windows performance reports to identify servers that may need more memory.
In addition, CC-NOC's system availability and outage reports help Hernandez measure his service level agreement (SLA) objectives of 99.999% system availability during core business hours. "The report tells us if we are meeting our objectives, and because the results are generated by CC-NOC automatically it saves us time," said Hernandez.