LogicMonitor > Case Studies > OPERS Enhances Server Maintenance and Performance with LogicMonitor

OPERS Enhances Server Maintenance and Performance with LogicMonitor

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Applicable Functions

Maintenance

Use Cases

Behavior & Emotion Tracking
Leakage & Flood Monitoring

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) is a government organization that provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefit programs for public employees throughout the state who are not covered by another state or local retirement system. The organization has over 250 employees and relies heavily on its server environment to handle critical processes and applications. The Data Engineering (DE) team at OPERS is responsible for scheduling downtime and maintenance for this large-scale server environment, ensuring that the servers can handle the workload appropriately when one is taken down for maintenance.

The Challenge

The Data Engineering (DE) team at Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) was responsible for scheduling downtime and maintenance for their large-scale server environment. These servers were crucial for handling critical processes and applications for the business organization. The DE team had to ensure that when a server was taken down for maintenance, the remaining servers could handle the workload efficiently. However, the team lacked visibility into utilization trends or graphs depicting peak usage hours on the servers. This lack of information led to assumptions about server load handling, resulting in significant lags across the business and service delays. Additionally, the DE team was often requested by internal customers, such as operations, finance, and executive management, to provide reports explaining why certain servers were taken offline for maintenance.

The Solution

In early 2021, the IT infrastructure team at OPERS switched from Solarwinds to LogicMonitor due to security concerns and the need for an observability platform to facilitate a smoother transition to a hybrid environment. This migration provided the IT team with new monitoring capabilities and the ability to display key information. They could now create custom dashboards to monitor and log server utilization, a feature that was crucial in their decision to implement LogicMonitor. These custom dashboards also fostered greater collaboration between the IT and DE teams. The IT team granted viewing permissions to the DE team, who began using these new graphs to inform their server maintenance schedule.

Operational Impact

With the implementation of LogicMonitor, the DE team at OPERS now has a straightforward method of accessing server performance and scheduling maintenance. The custom dashboards and graphs provided by LogicMonitor help the team draft a Service Downtime (SDT) policy and schedule that no longer causes lags across the business. The successful collaboration between the IT and DE teams has also benefited internal customer groups. The DE team can now provide solid data to justify their decision-making, allowing their strategy and success to be viewed across the entire organization. The implementation of LogicMonitor has made the roles of the DE team easier and has provided a monitoring solution that demonstrates their effectiveness and analytical thinking.