FAST: A Microsoft Subsidiary

Search Firm Improves Server Monitoring, Lowers Costs with Centralized Monitoring Tool

FAST wanted an easier, less expensive way to monitor 2,000 servers primarily running the UNIX and Linux operating systems. The company deployed the beta version of Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. By managing all its servers through a single console, FAST will improve data quality, reduce system triage time by 15 percent, and improve product support.

 

Business Needs

FAST is a leading developer of enterprise search technologies used by more than 2,600 customers. Based in Oslo, Norway, FAST was acquired by Microsoft in April 2008 and operates as a Microsoft® subsidiary. The firm has 600 employees and offices around the world.

Customers can run the FAST Enterprise Search Platform on their own servers or have FAST host it for them. The FAST Managed Services Group provides these managed hosting services through three data centers, in Needham, Massachusetts; Denver, Colorado; and Tokyo, Japan. Because FAST started out as an open source company, most of its 2,000 hosting servers run the Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux, and Novell SUSE Linux operating systems. However, it also hosts more than 100 servers running the Windows Server® 2003 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, which makes cross-platform monitoring extremely important for FAST’s day-to-day operations.

Server monitoring has always been expensive for FAST, because it has had to depend on open source tools. “To get the level of monitoring we needed was way beyond our budget,” says Mike McCall, Systems Engineering Lead in the Managed Services Group, FAST Search and Transfer. “We had to use a hodgepodge of open source tools, none of which did exactly what we needed, but they were all we could afford.” These included Nagios and OpenNMS application monitoring software packages, several open source systems management tools, and service monitoring tools created in-house.

As the FAST data centers expanded, from 400 to 2,000 servers in just a few years, the small server management staff did not have enough people to manage the environment well.

Solution

When FAST was acquired by Microsoft, it learned about the cross-platform management capabilities being added to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. “Out of the box, it supported all the operating systems we ran,” says Matt DiCecca, Systems Engineer in the Managed Services Group at FAST. “Being able to monitor processes, memory, processor utilization, and other server elements gave us dream metrics that we had never been able to obtain.”

With System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, we have a lot more tools to do more robust monitoring with less work. We can … feed all alerts through a single console. Mike McCall Systems Engineering Lead, Managed Services Group, FAST

FAST has deployed the beta version of the software on 1,000 servers and plans to have System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 monitoring all 2,000 servers by the time the production version is available. By deploying the software, FAST will be able to eliminate its mixed bag of open source tools and monitor all its servers through a single management console. This not only simplifies management and speeds problem resolution, but using System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, FAST will gain much more detail than previous solutions provided.

“System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 is much better organized than the tools we used previously,” DiCecca says. “The open source tools didn’t provide clear information as to what had gone wrong; they might tell us that a hard drive had failed, but depending on the server’s configuration, we didn’t know which one. It was like a guessing game. With System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, we know where we have to go and what we have to do.”

Benefits

With System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, FAST is obtaining more detailed server information, which speeds problem resolution, improves server uptime, and reduces management costs. With Microsoft supporting the software, the data center staff has gained increased peace of mind.

More Robust, Proactive Monitoring

With the more granular monitoring provided by System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, FAST has much better tabs on its 2,000 servers and can respond more proactively to potential problems. “With System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, we have a lot more tools to do more robust monitoring with less work,” McCall says. “We can centralize our monitoring tools and feed all alerts through a single console.”

DiCecca adds, “We no longer need to wait for something to fail; we receive alerts letting us know how our servers are performing along a variety of criteria. This much richer monitoring makes our data centers run more smoothly, because we’re no longer in reactionary mode.”

FAST will also be able to keep service levels high without as much work. “We’ve always provided exceptional service levels, but we had to run ourselves ragged trying to catch server issues before they could cause customer-facing downtime,” McCall says. “Now we’ll be able to maintain our service-level agreements with far less effort.”

Lower Costs

Instead of relaying specific application alerts from team to team, McCall can have System Center Operations Manager 2007 send them directly to the appropriate team. This, along with the more robust monitoring capabilities of System Center Operations Manager 2007, will enable FAST to reduce the time to resolution by 15 percent. “A 15 percent timesaving is hugely valuable to us, because we run with a very small staff,” McCall continues. “Each administrator manages about 300 servers. If we can give a junior administrator all the tools he needs to do a first-tier triage without involving a senior administrator, that’s a big win.”

FAST will also be able to use existing open source scripts with System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, so it does not lose that investment. “We will be able to write a management pack that uses those scripts, so with very little effort we can monitor all the things that we were monitoring previously,” DiCecca says.

Peace of Mind from Professional Support

“We have great peace of mind in knowing that there is support out there for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, people who know the application and can help us if problems arise,” DiCecca says. “With open source tools, sometimes you only have online resources, which are often out of date. We know that there is a team behind Operations Manager and that issues will get resolved.”