Introduction
Today, IT departments are pressured into doing more with less, and that this will require innovative approaches to management and operating staff.
Innovations in technology are also supporting this, as silos within operations, and between operations and the service desk and application development, are slowly being bridged by innovative management and monitoring software solutions designed for modularity, cohesiveness and automation. As IT departments plan to bridge this divide, it is important to keep in mind that the automation can empower us to become more efficient[1], but we will be sacrificing some of the gains if we are not willing to leverage the advantages of automation as a transformative, cultural and process catalyst because they are interdependent.
In Information Technology Division (ITD) of International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), the approach is by using the HP Openview Service Desk and some other open source network management/monitoring tools. The integration of ITD Service Desk and these tools provides the capability for effective monitoring and problem resolution. These systems are used to minimize service disruptions by tracking the ticket being opened when a complaint is received until it is resolved, and providing acceptable problem resolution time and proactive monitoring of the University's network and enterprise applications and services. The integration of ITD Service Desk and these tools provides the capability for effective monitoring and problem resolution.
What we need to monitor on our network will vary greatly between businesses, but according to [2], the following should be considered an appropriate starting point: Servers, Firewalls and Line-of-Business applications. In [3], four critical network elements that need monitoring are suggested. They are: Email servers, WAN links, Business Applications and LAN Infrastructure. This is also supported in [4], in which advised that status information about current network devices such as routers and switches and critical network servers along with status of essential services such as email, website, and file transfer services need to be monitored.
The bottom line is that businesses are nowadays more dependent on their networks than ever before. Properly monitoring our network will result in fewer unplanned outages, and an overall improvement in the health of the network.
Currently, ITD Service Desk is using HP Openview Service Desk as its management tool and several open source tools as its network management/monitoring tools. We will concentrate on Nagios and Airwave. Nagios is a popular open source software to monitor hosts, services, applications, and networks on a large scale. It comes with many plug-ins/add-on that can be exploited as needed.
We have formulated four research objectives for this study. First, it is the aim of this research to understand the current procedures flow when receiving a complaint/problem. Second, it is also the aim of this research to understand if there is/are monitoring tool(s) being integrated into the current ITD service desk. The third aim of this study is to know how this system can help ITD in problem resolution by knowing the advantages and drawbacks of the tools. We also aim to give suggestion on ways to improve problem resolution, based on current trends and practices, using literature reviews.
The Methodology used in this research is to interview the staff of ITD to examine service desk operations, practices and technologies in ITD together with literature review.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows; in the next section, we will look at the current procedures practiced by ITD Service Desk operation, later is a brief review about HP Openview as an ITD Service Desk software. Next we will list down the reasons why we should be using monitoring tools, followed by the description of Nagios and Airwave as the selected monitoring systems being used in ITD. We will also list down some of the advantages and drawbacks of these systems, and lastly provide some suggestions to improve efficiency in the ITD Service Desk operations.
CURRENT PROCEDURES
The Figure below shows the flow of management of Service Desk operation.
The status of any incoming ticket can be registered, assigned, in progress, job done, close or workshop. Currently, all ITD staffs have access to the ITD Service Desk, but with different authorities. For example, Support Team Staff will be able to update the ticket up to the 'job done' status, but actually closing the ticket can only be done by the supervisor or by the service desk officer only. Once the supervisor changes the ticket status to 'assigned', an e-mail will be sent to the staff assigned to the job and to the complainant. The problem resolution time is based on the Service Level Agreement (SLA). The complainant will also receive an e-mail once the ticket is closed.
The flow of management of Service Desk operation
HP Openview : A BRIEF REVIEW
HP OpenView was the former name for a Hewlett Packard product family that consists of network and systems management products. In 2007, HP OpenView was rebranded when it became part of the HP Software business, and later in 2008 the division was renamed HP Software & Solutions. HP OpenView software provided large-scale system and network management of an organization's IT infrastructure. It included optional modules from HP as well as third- party management software, which connected within a common framework and communicated with one another. [11]
Top-level "deadline-driven" dashboard
HP Openview Service Desk software, streamlines the process of tracking service problems and following them through to resolution.
Default aggregate chart
Timeline view.
Key features and benefits [12]:
Provide real - time visibility of ITSM/ITIL processes supported by HP OpenView Service Desk.
Generates abstracted "process" views closer to how ITIL processes are typically described.
Includes graphical modeling tools to tailor the processes you want to monitor.
Is built on HP OpenView Business Process Insight, providing extensibility for monitoring business processes (subject to additional licensing).
Is extensible to provide insight into processes that span HP and non-HP help-desk systems.
Features a pre-defined customizable web-dashboard.
Monitors basic processes provided with HP OpenView Service Desk, and can be customized to the best practice ITIL processes of your implementation.
Interoperates with HP OpenView Internet Services, HP OpenView Service Navigator, HP OpenView Operations for Windows® and third-party sources to obtain information and status on the infrastructure that supports your HP OpenView Service Desk system.
WHY USE MONITORING TOOLS?
The reasons to use network monitoring are listed in [4].
Great Savings. Network monitoring helps us to cut down on the total amount of downtime and time it takes to investigate problems. This translates to fewer man-hours and less money when problems occur.
Keep Us Informed. Network monitoring tools keep us informed about the operation and connectivity of our devices and resources on our network. Without these features, someone has to tell us that something is down before we can get into action and fix it.
Better Planning. For example if we have a device which is constantly down, the said device should be replaced or optimized. The same goes in the case where the bandwidth to a specific subnet is always running near the limit. Network monitoring applications allow us to track this type of data and make appropriate changes with ease, before being too late.
Prompt Problems Diagnosing. Without network monitoring, you may not be able to isolate if the problem is the server, the switch the server is connected to, or the router in the event in which one of our servers is unreachable from the intranet. Knowing exactly where the problem lies will definitely save time.
Better Reporting. Graphical reports are always better in explaining the health of and activity on our network. They are great tools in proving or showing that a troublesome device needs replacing.
Disaster-recovery Solutions At The Right Time. With enough warning, we can transfer the operation of important servers to a backup system until the main system can be repaired and brought back online. Without network monitoring, we may not know there is a problem until it is too late.
Proper Operation of Our Security Systems. As companies spend a lot of money on security equipments (software and hardware), we want to be sure that our security devices are up and running as configured. But without a network monitoring tool, we would never be sure it is running as we intended it to be.
Better Tracking of Front-End Resources. Many devices on our network are applications running on a server (HTTP, FTP, mail, and so on). Network monitoring can watch these applications and make sure our customers can connect to the servers.
Remote Access. Many network monitoring applications allows for remote viewing and management from anywhere with an Internet connection. We can still log into our Web interface and see what is wrong even when we are away.
Ensure customer satisfaction. If we have customers depending on our network for their business, we have to be sure they're up and running at all times. It is always good to know and fix it before our customer finds out. It is always good to be proactive rather than reactive.
ITD MONITORING TOOLS
Nagios
Nagios is a powerful and stable monitoring system that enables organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes.[13]
How Nagios Works[13]:
Monitoring - IT staff configure Nagios to monitor critical IT infrastructure components, including system metrics, network protocols, applications, services, servers, and network infrastructure.
Alerting - Nagios sends alerts when critical infrastructure components fail and recover, providing administrators with notice of important events. Alerts can be delivered via email, SMS, or custom script.
Response - IT staff can acknowledge alerts and begin resolving outages and investigating security alerts immediately. Alerts can be escalated to different groups if alerts are not acknowledged in a timely manner.
Reporting - Reports provide a historical record of outages, events, notifications, and alert response for later review. Availability reports help ensure your SLAs are being met.
Maintenance - Scheduled downtime prevents alerts during scheduled maintenance and upgrade windows.
Planning - Trending and capacity planning graphs and reports allow you to identify necessary infrastructure upgrades before failures occur.
Service Detail
Host Detail
AirWave Wireless management Suite
The AirWave Wireless Management Suite is a comprehensive set of software applications that provide you a single console from which to monitor, configure and control your entire wireless network - whether you have 25 wireless access points or twenty-five thousand. [14]
The core components of the suite include[14] :
The AirWave Management Platform (AMP) software for configuration, monitoring, and reporting.
AirWave Management Platform
The VisualRF module for location tracking and RF mapping (includes the AirWave Wireless Site Planâ„¢ offline planning tool).
VisualRF
The RAPIDS module for automated rogue access point detection. Organizations with large wireless networks with thousands of access points and controllers use the AirWave Master Console to view their entire WLAN from a single web-based console.
RAPIDS
ADVANTAGES AND liMITATIONS OF MONITORING SYSTEMS USED
1. HP Openview Service Desk
a. Advantages - Some benefits mentioned here are:
It can determine accessibility and execution from many perspectives
It also brings all these viewpoints together in a service desk console
b. Limitations - There are also disadvantages
High pricing. Proven by HP notice as in [5] to its rival to cease revealing HP's "confidential pricing." The letter doesn't claim that GroundWork is using false data to promote its own product, which can only confirm that HP is well aware of the fact that its IT monitoring software product is considerably more expensive than that of its open-source competitor.[5]
2. Nagios
a. Advantages - The benifits of using Nagios are:
It is free of charge and easy to use.
It is also scalable and potential to deploy a hierarchy of Nagios servers to provide strengthen views of network or system availability.
b. Limitations - Some limitation found here
Eventhough Nagios comes up with many add-ons, there is a certain degree of expertise needed to configure these add-ons to make it work.
3. Wireless Monitoring System - Airwave
a. Advantages - Using Airwave have some advantages
proactive action after receiving alert
reporting tool
auditing tool
log activity tool
b. Limitations - There are also few disadvantages
Cannot monitor services
Limited only to network availability
Nagios- What are the criterias? Eg: flashing dashboard etc, what can be monitored?nodes, switches, servers, firewalls, routers etc, does it offers flexibility, visibility, ease of use, free of charge, comes with plug-in/add-on which can be used to match our needs, etc
AirWave- What are the criterias? It is compliance with the criteria which can transmit a wide band audio & video signals up to 100 meters in an open area.
How Has The Monitoring Systems helped in improving the problem resolution by the ITD service desk?
ITD can improve their customers' satisfaction of their services through the use of monitoring system. It can also fasten their job and achieve their goals.
Requirement and Expectation from itd SERVICE desk
The service will be available to all university constituents 24 x 7.
The service desk must support all IIUM application.
The ticket tracking system must integrate with the IIUM portal.
The service desk and its ticket tracking system must be available 99.9 percent of the time.
SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE EFFIECIENCY
As time changes, monitoring IT environments using monitoring systems alone is no longer enough. We list down some of our suggestions based on some literature reviews and from the outcome of our interview with the ITD staff.
1) ITD Service Desk should be web-based, can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. Access should also be given to complainant with read-only access for them to know their problem status.
2) Automatic integration of data from monitoring systems into service desk system. Trouble tickets should also be allowed to automatically trigger by a network or application failure. An example is as described in [7], where Nagios was configured to automatically create error tickets fed into the service desk based on the HP Network Node Manager.
3) For future, if the support staff wants to have an overview over the monitored system anytime and anywhere, the idea as introduced in [8] can be considered. The iNagMon, a Nagios visualization application for the iPhone was introduced using NagVis, a visualization add-on for Nagios (for the purpose of visualizing Nagios data) and iNagios which is an iPhone web interface to Nagios.
4) Involve everyone, helpdesk staff and managers alike, in reviewing performance data on an ongoing basis and in taking responsibility for It. [15]
5) A certain number of service engineers are maintained in order to provide the service support. It needs to keep on training new service engineers, and at the same time, come up with new incentive scheme to keep experienced service engineers. [16]
6) Changes the Service Desk area and a new Call Center with more workstations and added a bank of computers used in trouble shooting our customers. It added a work area for professional staff members, a new Front Desk to handle walk-in customers, and a computer station for helping customers with network registration and password changes. [17]
7) ITD should apply any remote management system to solve users' problems faster and to increase more First Call Resolutions (FCR)
As per the interview session with ITD staff, we have acknowledged that ITD intends to have a proper Network Operation Centre (NOC) and also proposes to buy the Fluke Network Monitoring System, which are accessible to monitor network services for appliance or server base devices. At the same time, they are able to identify the bottleneck of network problem accurately and efficiently.
Acknowledgment
We would like to thank En. Megat Muazam Shah and En. Jaiz Anuar Yeop Johari of the Information Technology Department (ITD), IIUM for providing excellent assistance in this case study paper work.
