Automation Leader Monitors Global Presence With AppNeta
- IT ROLE: Raj Avinish, Senior Network Engineer
- COMPANY: ATS Automation
- NEEDS: Managing and monitoring about 40 remote locations
- RESULTS: Better user experience, improved root cause identification
ATS Automation is a leader in the tool manufacturing industry, with a data center each in the U.S. and Germany. Network engineer Raj Avinish helps manage and monitor 75 WAN-connected sites globally. The company has AppNeta devices at approximately 40 sites to monitor both MPLS circuits and the internet. The remote service providers working at those branches don’t usually have IT teams on site.
The Challenges Solved With AppNeta
1. Improving network performance for end users. Avinish monitors utilization and round-trip time between the main data center and the remote site where there’s a problem or user complaint. “We use the data from AppNeta to see who’s using which network connection and what other tools they’re using,” Avinish says. “We can look at the paths ourselves to get the correct utilization number at that site.”
2. Big-picture look at network. “I like that we can look at activity over time,” Avinish says. “We also use route analysis, and if my route changes, I get notified.” They also get reports on route changes and latency or jitter issues.
The network team also started to understand their network infrastructure better with AppNeta. “A lot of our sites move data to the main data center,” says Avinish. “We noticed we were using MPLS for backup, instead of manually putting that data on the internet.” They’ll use SD-WAN to send traffic dynamically to get better use of those connections.
3. Keeping ISPs honest. “We do testing on circuits to see what we’re getting from the ISP and if we’re on the internet circuit,” Avinish says. ATS was able to see that they were only getting 10 MG from a provider internet circuit, rather than the 50 MG that was promised. ATS also uses AppNeta to measure QoS markings to ensure they’re being enforced.
4. Troubleshooting and fixing remote location issues. Without dedicated IT resources on site at remote locations, the network team has to solve problems from afar. “We send an AppNeta device to the location if they don’t have one,” says Avinish. “We put it there for a week to see if there are issues, then fix them.” In one case, the monitoring data showed a bouncing circuit that the ISP solved. This data has helped improve root cause identification among various IT teams at ATS.
With an SD-WAN deployment on the horizon and a growing global business, AppNeta has helped this network engineering team keep visibility into remote sites.