Due Diligence and Audit

Overview
Eye of the Storm® is a highly flexible infrastructure management solution. This brief summarizes its application as a Due Diligence and/or Audit tool, under Entuity’s Service Assurance and Verification (SAV) license.

Understand the IT Infrastructure
Whether you are a Service Provider, Enterprise, Outsourcer, or Systems Integrator the first step of resource management is discovery, or understanding what you have. You have to calculate the impact of network change risk of taking on networks and estimate the resources required to manage them. Often you are working in an environment where deadlines are tight and access to the required information is limited.

Eye of the Storm is ideally suited to this environment. It:

• Is easy to install, configure and use.
• Collects the information you require without:
• Impacting the NOC or infrastructure.
• Waiting for the generation of baselines.
• Is easy to remove from the site after the monitoring period.
• Allows you to investigate and analyze the infrastructure in your own time.
• Generates reports that are meaningful to all of the interested parties.

Consider how Eye of the Storm works on site:

• Eye of the Storm can be installed to your laptop. You do not need to install to a machine on site, simply plug the laptop into the network.
• On configuration auto Discovery immediately generates an inventory, which includes such details as vendor, model, operating system, device counts.
• Over the automated monitoring period further fault, performance and inventory data is collected against applications, application servers and devices.

On removing Eye of the Storm from the site, you can still:

• Use the client to drill-down, and understand the role of any asset, through:
• Graphing of any attribute, e.g. backplane usage.
• Viewing the asset’s complete event history
• Viewing it within the topology map.
• Build new business views of the infrastructure as you learn more about it.
• Review existing reports and generate new ones.

Eye of the Storm uniquely combines ease of use and minimum impact with end-to-end visibility of the IT infrastructure. Its management and presentation of performance, fault and inventory information and thorough network discovery allows you to make the decisions that are the correct ones for your enterprise.

Eye of the Storm functionality for Service Level Management

Audit Using Eye of the Storm
1. Easy Installation and Configuration
Eye of the Storm configuration is through an easy to use wizard. Network discovery can be automatically initiated, or if there is an inventory list, directly imported into Eye of the Storm. Once configuration is complete you can set up the applications that you want to monitor, views of the infrastructure (e.g. by location, physical or logical structures) and schedule any reports. A typical implementation is completed in one half day.

2. Collecting Information
Eye of the Storm network discovery uses a technique which allows one request to return extremely detailed device information, minimizing the impact of infrastructure monitoring. This data is immediately available as information; Eye of the Storm knows both how an asset actually performs and how it could perform, baselining is not required.

(Click on image to enlarge)
Example EYE Router Summary Report

3. Easy Removal from the Client Site
Once the monitoring period is complete, simply collect your laptop. After only two site visits and approximately one half day on site you have a complete record of the infrastructure’s activity over the monitored period.
Note: Ten days is the shortest recommended monitoring period; this includes two weekends for reporting purposes.

4. Investigation and Analysis
On returning to your office, run Eye of the Storm but suspend data collection. All other functionality is available:

• Eye of the Storm contains dozens of in-built reports, including the:
• Network Discovery Report
• Switch and Router Summary reports
• Availability Summary reports
• Spare Ports report
• Traffic device reports
• SLA Management reports
• Capacity Planning reports
• Use the COM API or XML access mechanisms to run your own custom reports on the Eye of the Storm database.
• Use Flex Reports to build custom reports.
• Document the infrastructure by exporting topology information to Visio.
• Search the database using the fully functional Find tool.
• All graphs, including the Attribute Grapher, are available.
• All generated events are available.

Thorough network discovery allows you time to thoroughly investigate the infrastructure. You can build views, drill-down to gain an understanding of what’s really happening and then generate the required reports.

Key Benefits

• Quick and easy configuration on the client’s site.
• Minimal disruption to the client during discovery
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• Minimal impact to the client’s network.
• You retain a fully functional view of the client’s network, so you can ask and answer the right questions.
• Accurate discovery and inventory of network assets, together with availability and performance information.
• Clear indication of asset utilization and spare capacity.
• Reliable identification of faulty components.
• Comprehensive range of management reports.

Contact Entuity for a demonstration and details of our Service Assurance and Verifi cation (SAV) license.

Eye of the Storm Summary
Eye of the Storm combines IT performance, fault and inventory management into one powerful IT network management solution. Its integrated database aligns business applications with IT infrastructure and provides the historical context required to detect, isolate and report performance and service degradations in real time. The highly flexible reporting engine supports both ad hoc data queries and scheduled reports.

EYE users find its ease of deployment, ease of use, and immediate ROI key differentiators. Entuity’s customers are some of the largest companies in the world with the most complex networks imaginable. They include: Banc of America Securities, Credit Suisse First Boston, IBM Global Services, JP Morgan, Lloyds TSB, Nomura, MetLife, O2, Universal Studios, University of Minnesota, Magellan Health Services, Cooperative Financial Services, United States National Guard and California State University.

Eye of the Storm Integrated Network Management
The convergence of different types of information allows Eye of the Storm a unique understanding of network events, changes in network usage and their impact on your business:

• Performance Management uses Service Degradation Sensitivity to predict problems, so infrastructure managers can take action before users notice.
• Fault Management distinguishes between network, server and application faults and then reports the True Cause along with its business implications.
• Inventory Management provides a full inventory of IT infrastructure assets and what they are connected to. Included is a Spare Ports Report that can save you more than the cost of the Entuity solution in a single session.

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