Automotive Manufacturer

challenge

The company operates its core applications on IBM Power Systems running AIX.

This environment is the focus of monitoring and management – including investigating and remotely assisting the resolution of incidents arising from day-to-day operations, or configuration of the IBM infrastructure.

In order to keep the dealer system running at peak performance, the client needed additional monitoring of disk and CPU capacity, backup success and network connectivity – plus patching and other system changes.

The company’s disaster recovery system is hosted in a third party data centre.

Monitoring the DR services provided is an important part of the total management service.

SOLUTION

Before designing the solution, CSI carried out an assessment of the entire IBM environment and the client accepted a recommendation that other line of business applications that were running on IBM i systems would benefit from the same level of monitoring and management as the AIX workloads.

CSI implemented a comprehensive set of services for all IBM host systems and LPARs.

CSI’s Network Operations Centre provides 24/7 monitoring for:

• completion of backups – and notifies the client if failed
• real-time performance events
• hardware and communication link failures and errors
• disk and CPU utilisation and trend analysis
• Power HA Replication system

CSI also carries out system changes, firmware patches and PTF upgrades.

outcomes

CSI’s Service Desk is the single point of contact for this client’s incident and problem  management as well as request fulfilment.

All aspects of the service are managed by a fully accountable Service Delivery Manager who  provides the client with a monthly report including a technical review of each AIX and IBM i LPAR.

Additionally, the company is also considering the results of a security audit which highlighted several areas of potential vulnerability on the AIX LPARs.

CSI will recommend operating system hardening – first on non-production LPARs and, once tested, on all production AIX partitions.

The security hardening recommendations also include an improved user authentication policy.