Customer Solution Case Study
CenterPoint Energy Moves from IBM Tivoli to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 for Monitoring
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Utilities
Customer Profile
Houston, Texas–based CenterPoint Energy delivers electricity and natural gas to 5 million customers in six states. The utility company has 9,000 employees and revenues of about U.S.$8 billion.
Business Situation
CenterPoint needed a reliable solution to monitor 261 server computers it was rolling out with Microsoft® software. The company also wanted to integrate the solution with an IBM Tivoli product.
Solution
With Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and Engyro Corporation’s Product Connector for MOM 2005 to Tivoli TEC, CenterPoint has improved operational efficiencies in managing its Microsoft-based servers.
Benefits
n Reduces response time
n Improves enterprise view
n Delivers high performance
n Increases alert accuracy
n Improves resource allocation / "MOM 2005 is like having extra sets of eyes on each server. We don't have to sit there and monitor each server ourselves."
Richard Barr, Senior Systems Programmer, CenterPoint Energy
CenterPoint Energy needed an efficient way to monitor new Microsoft® software it was rolling out on 261 server computers in 125 sites, while continuing to manage its IBM mainframe, UNIX, and other existing environments. The company wanted a solution that would integrate with the IBM Tivoli Enterprise software that monitored those environments, enabling CenterPoint to easily manage systems enterprisewide. To benefit from Microsoft expertise in managing the software, CenterPoint implemented Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. It also enlisted Microsoft partner Engyro Corporation to install its Product Connector for MOM 2005 to Tivoli TEC. Now CenterPoint has a precise view of how its entire network computing infrastructure is performing. In the past, it sometimes took hours to figure out what went wrong and where with the Microsoft infrastructure. With MOM 2005, that process takes only minutes.
Situation
Houston, Texas–based CenterPoint Energy provides electricity and natural gas to 5 million residential and commercial customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Founded in 1866 as the Houston Gas Light Company, CenterPoint now operates 125 sites and employs more than 9,000 people in 9 states. The company enjoys revenues of about U.S.$8 billion.
The network computing infrastructure at CenterPoint had grown over time to include server software from multiple vendors. For instance, the company used Novell NetWare to provide file, print, and directory services and relied on IBM Lotus Notes as its e-mail server. CenterPoint also ran its databases on Oracle, IBM DB2, and Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000. To make sure that these and other applications were performing properly, CenterPoint used IBM Tivoli Distributed Monitoring from the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Suite of products.
In 2004, CenterPoint made a strategic decision to consolidate on Microsoft software while retaining its mainframe and UNIX servers. The following year, the company began to roll out 261 server computers to its 125 sites. The software included the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system with the Active Directory® service, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, and Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003.
Before CenterPoint launched this ambitious consolidation effort, it needed to select a monitoring solution to ensure that the Microsoft-based server computers it planned to deploy would perform properly. The company was not confident that Tivoli Distributed Monitoring was the best choice to manage its new all-Microsoft environment. In the past, Tivoli Distributed Monitoring had not always provided an accurate, up-to-the-minute picture of how the company's multivendor server and application environments were performing. It sometimes reported failures when none had occurred. And it had difficulty monitoring Microsoft server clusters, says Richard Barr, Senior Systems Programmer at CenterPoint. "We just couldn’t get the consistency or stability we were looking for from Tivoli Distributed Monitoring."
When Tivoli Distributed Monitoring failed to pinpoint the cause of a problem, IT administrators at CenterPoint had two choices. They could manually examine event logs to find errors, or they could customize program components of the Tivoli software suite to detect the problem for them. But in some cases both tasks required "hours and hours" to complete, says Barr.
In addition, Tivoli Distributed Monitoring did not report failures as they occurred. Instead of operating in a real-time mode, the software probed the servers it was monitoring at preset time intervals, says Larry Viars, Senior Systems Programmer in the Enterprise Systems Management Group at CenterPoint. "With our previous monitoring software, we didn't know immediately what was happening."
CenterPoint sought a solution to monitor its Microsoft servers, one that would not only improve efficiency and provide consistently accurate results, but also was easy to set up and manage. In addition, CenterPoint required that the solution for monitoring Microsoft servers integrate seamlessly with the software already monitoring the mainframe and UNIX environments at CenterPoint.
Solution
CenterPoint considered using software products from NetIQ, such as AppManager Analysis Center, and new versions in the IBM Tivoli Suite. But because the company had committed to consolidating its networked business systems on Microsoft software, CenterPoint focused its evaluation effort on Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005. "Based on its technical abilities, such as performance and ease of use, we quickly concluded that MOM 2005 was the best choice," says Barr. CenterPoint has a complex network and application computing infrastructure, which includes many server clusters. "We found no other product that can manage the Microsoft environment to the extent that MOM can," he says. "MOM also provided the framework to integrate with our current production management systems."
MOM 2005 is the event and performance management tool designed for Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. It continuously collects event and performance data from monitored computers using MOM agents installed on those computers. MOM 2005 detects failures, such as a database that has gone down, and it also pinpoints potential problems, such as a disk drive that is rapidly approaching storage capacity. It routes that information, in the form of alerts, to a central console, which provides IT administrators with an accurate,
real-time view of the how the network is performing.
CenterPoint found other compelling reasons to select MOM 2005, including management packs that provide operational knowledge to help MOM 2005 manage servers. "They are the most attractive thing MOM brings to the table," says Barr. Because the management packs contain rules for identifying issues and creating alerts, IT administrators save time associated with completing those labor-intensive tasks.
What's more, management packs contain product-specific knowledge that would be time-consuming for IT administrators to acquire on their own. Each management pack is created by experts. For example, the one for Exchange Server 2003 was created by the Microsoft development group responsible for that server. "Who knows better how to manage Exchange Server than the team that developed it?" says Barr.
CenterPoint began evaluating and testing MOM 2005 in October 2004. Four months later, it successfully deployed the monitoring tool. The company installed MOM 2005 on two MOM management servers, which run on the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Both servers are tied to a four-node SQL Server cluster connected to a high-speed storage area network (SAN). CenterPoint took only 15 days to complete the MOM 2005 installation, configuration, and deployment process, which proceeded smoothly and within budget, says Barr.
Another reason why CenterPoint chose MOM 2005 was MOM Connector Framework. The framework is an interface that makes it easy to connect MOM 2005 to third-party solutions, such as the Tivoli Enterprise Console that CenterPoint uses to view the health of its mainframe and UNIX computing infrastructure. CenterPoint wanted MOM and the Tivoli product to share data on events and alerts. To connect the solutions, the company enlisted the help of Microsoft partner Engyro.
In June 2005, CenterPoint began evaluating the Engyro Product Connector for MOM 2005 to Tivoli TEC. The company implemented it two months later. Engyro used MOM Connector Framework to implement its Product Connector, which serves as a bridge linking the MOM 2005 management servers to the Tivoli solution. "MOM Connector Framework helped speed up the development process and enabled us to integrate with MOM in a highly efficient manner," says Larry Steinberg, Chief Technology Officer, at Engyro. Without MOM Connection Framework in place, Engyro would have been forced to write a more complex MOM integration module, he says.
CenterPoint also installed the connector on two MOM management servers to provide redundancy. CenterPoint praised the solution’s high degree of availability. “We could not put a piece of code between the MOM management servers and our other management infrastructure without having high-availability components,” says Barr. “And Engyro provided what we needed.”
CenterPoint gradually increased the number of server computers monitored by MOM 2005, and was able to add as many as 50 in a two-hour period. It completed the process in December 2005, bringing the total to 261 Microsoft-based servers. MOM 2005 monitors Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, Live Communications Server 2003, and Systems Management Server 2003, among other Microsoft server components and applications.
Benefits
MOM 2005 has helped CenterPoint make Microsoft server management easier, a key goal of the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). DSI is a Microsoft-led, industrywide effort to address challenges across the entire IT life cycle by simplifying and automating the way businesses design, deploy, and operate distributed systems. With MOM 2005, CenterPoint has improved operational efficiency.
Reduces Response Time from Hours
to Minutes
Shortly after CenterPoint deployed MOM 2005, it put the monitoring tool to a formidable test: managing a rollout of 261 new Microsoft-based servers. "MOM 2005 was invaluable during that process," says Barr. For example, during the rollout, MOM 2005 suddenly began generating alerts pertaining to synchronization and connection problems. "We knew within minutes we had a problem with Active Directory," he says. The error turned out to be an incorrect DNS entry made by an IT administrator at one of the company's remote sites. Previously, the IT staff would have had to review event logs manually to discover such a problem. CenterPoint can now respond to IT issues in minutes instead of hours. “With MOM 2005, we were seeing an immediate return on our investment.”
Improves Enterprise View
By connecting MOM 2005 to Tivoli Enterprise Console, CenterPoint now has visibility into its entire computing network. “CenterPoint can use best-of-breed monitoring for the Microsoft world,” says Steinberg. “That data can be forwarded to Tivoli TEC, which gives an enterprise view of what’s going on in all layers of the network. It allows CenterPoint to do enterprisewide root-cause analysis.”
Delivers High Performance
When the MOM 2005 architecture was complete, CenterPoint tested the system’s performance before going live. A key goal was to determine how many alerts MOM 2005 could successfully transmit across the Engyro Product Connector. During a 24-hour period, MOM 2005 sent 109,000 alerts. "That's a pretty significant number," says Barr. "We were very pleased that all components sustained the load. This gave us a high degree of confidence that our specifications with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2000, MOM 2005, Engyro, and Tivoli Enterprise Console were more than adequate and ready for production.”
Increases Alert Accuracy and Improves Resource Allocation
Before CenterPoint implemented MOM 2005, the company never had a complete, reliable picture of how its Microsoft computing infrastructure was performing. Its previous monitoring solution often generated alerts erroneously. "But MOM 2005 has never given us a single false-positive," says Barr.
The improved accuracy rate gives CenterPoint great confidence in how its network environment is performing. It also helps the company allocate IT staff resources more efficiently. IT administrators no longer spend time chasing after problems that turn out to be false alarms. "MOM 2005 frees them up to work on projects that are more related to the business we’re in," says Barr.
Supports Future Plans
As CenterPoint moves into the next phase of MOM 2005, Barr expects to realize further gains. In 2006, the company plans to begin using the MOM reporting features, which will allow CenterPoint to analyze network and computing performance trends. In addition, the company plans to use MOM 2005 not only to identify failures, but also to automate the process of fixing them. "MOM 2005 is like having extra sets of eyes on each server," says Barr. "We don't have to sit there and monitor each server ourselves.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem