Explorer Pipeline

Fuel Transporter Improves IT Efficiency and Security with New Management Tool

Explorer Pipeline managed its distributed network with a variety of tools, but the IT staff still had limited information about the environment and spent hours each week manually checking its health. By deploying Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2007, the company significantly reduced the amount of time necessary to manage its network. Explorer Pipeline also is now able to detect and resolve issues before they affect system performance.

 

Business Needs

One of the leading fuel transportation companies in the United States, Explorer Pipeline operates a 1,400-mile pipeline system that moves gasoline and other fuels to more than 70 major population centers in 16 states. The company has 150 employees and 100 contractors spread among its Tulsa, Oklahoma headquarters and six remote offices.

We should be saving at least 20 hours per week by using System Center Essentials 2007. The more we use it, the more we’ll save. Tim Vander Kooi, Microsoft Systems Administrator, Explorer Pipeline

The five-person IT staff at Explorer Pipeline manages 16 server computers, most of which run the Windows Server™ 2003 operating system. The environment’s servers run a Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 database, messaging, file and print services, domain control, and management tools. Ten of them are at the Tulsa headquarters, and the remaining six are located at remote sites to speed up file access for employees. Explorer Pipeline has a total of 225 desktop and portable computers.

The company’s IT staff members handle everything from desktop support to infrastructure management. Until recently, the department had been using a variety of disparate management tools to keep the environment running smoothly. While these tools had been functional, they were not integrated with each other, nor did they give staff sufficient ability to manage the Explorer Pipeline environment in a proactive way. “In addition to using SolarWinds products to manage our network devices and some servers, we’d been using Group Policy to deploy .msi files and Desktop Authority from ScriptLogic to deploy .exe files,” explains Tim Vander Kooi, Microsoft Systems Administrator for Explorer Pipeline. “Neither method gave me a way to see if the deployments were successful—I had to hear from users that their systems weren’t working properly.”

Explorer Pipeline lacked visibility into its environment. “We didn’t have any good way to find useful information about which areas needed help, so it was easy for issues to get overlooked,” says Vander Kooi. “We wanted to become proactive and resolve issues before they became real problems.”

Solution

Explorer Pipeline decided to consolidate its management tools so that it could monitor and manage its environment in a more organized way. Vander Kooi had heard about the upcoming release of Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007. He says, “It sounded as though System Center Essentials 2007 would bring together all the management tools necessary to handle our systems and do so in a single window, which was really appealing to me.”

After a limited deployment and subsequent lab testing, Explorer Pipeline deployed a prerelease version of System Center Essentials 2007 in March 2007. “It was a simple deployment process that took approximately 90 minutes,” says Vander Kooi.

As of May 2007, Explorer Pipeline is using System Center Essentials 2007 to monitor and manage 25 desktop computers, 5 server computers, and 1 virtual server. It has used the product to automatically deploy both .msi and .exe file updates and received clear verification from the management tool that the deployments were successful. Explorer Pipeline plans to bring the remainder of its environment under System Center Essentials 2007 management by June 2007.

Rather than having to manually check the health of various portions of the Explorer Pipeline environment—a task that used to take a minimum of eight hours per week—Vander Kooi keeps a System Center Essentials 2007 window open on his computer so that he can see any system issues at a glance. He also uses the new product to automatically discover new computers on the network and bring them under management.

Vander Kooi has found the knowledge base that is part of System Center Essentials 2007 to be particularly helpful. “It’s great to have an easy place to go to read up on issues or download an update,” says Vander Kooi. “I had a computer that was failing to correctly install a new service pack, and the knowledge base provided me with an answer far faster than the Internet would have.”

Benefits

The IT staff members at Explorer Pipeline are using System Center Essentials 2007 to maintain a more manageable environment, resulting in greater efficiency for IT staff members and end users alike. “When fully deployed, we should be saving at least 20 hours per week by using System Center Essentials 2007,” says Vander Kooi. “The more we use it, the more we’ll save.”

• Streamlined management. Now that IT staff can perform network monitoring and management activities from a single window, their jobs have become faster and easier. For instance, the company’s IS Support Specialist can check System Center Essentials 2007 to help set her daily job priorities. Plus, she does not need Vander Kooi to help with user support anymore, which saves him approximately 10 hours per month. He also spends 75 percent less time deploying updates and no longer has to manually ensure that updates and installations were successful. “If I had had Essentials 2007 two weeks earlier, my life would have been a whole lot better,” says Vander Kooi. “I took 5 round-trip flights in 10 business days, which cost the company around $3,000 in expenses alone—all to check on installations that I can now monitor from my desk chair.”
  
  
• Increased productivity. By detecting and resolving issues before they cause poor performance or network downtime, the company’s IT staff saves its own time and also keeps users effective. “Our users appreciate us coming to them before there’s a crisis,” says Vander Kooi. “We can schedule work on their computers when they’re away, so we’re less intrusive and they have less unproductive time. Plus, taking preventive steps—such as addressing hard drives or server disks that are almost full—takes less time for us than reacting to problems after they occur.”
  
  
• Healthier network environment. The Explorer Pipeline IT staff members have noticed that the computers they now are managing with System Center Essentials 2007 are more secure and have fewer issues than those managed with the heterogeneous toolset. “When we started using [System Center] Essentials 2007, we were surprised how many issues we just hadn’t known about. The tool’s reporting functionality brought those problems to the surface so that we could take care of them,” says Vander Kooi.