Zenoss > Case Studies > Rackspace Keeps Pace with Evolving Customer Needs

Rackspace Keeps Pace with Evolving Customer Needs

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Zenoss

Tech Stack

SNMP polling
Synthetic transactions
Threshold-based monitoring

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Infrastructure Inspection
Remote Asset Management

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing and is ranked #43 on FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for in the United States. The company provides its customers Fanatical Support ® in their portfolio of hosted IT services, including Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing and Email and Apps. The company is based in San Antonio, Texas. Rackspace has a large customer base and manages over 13,000 Cisco network devices. The company was in need of a new network monitoring solution that could meet its extreme scalability requirements and could be easily configured to address its unique environment.

The Challenge

Rackspace Hosting, a leading IT hosting company, was facing a challenge in ensuring the uptime of over 13,000 Cisco network devices spread across its extensive customer base. The company had outgrown its network management tools and required a new network monitoring solution that had deeper out-of-the-box functionality, could meet its extreme scalability requirements, and could be easily configured to address Rackspace’s unique environment. In summer 2007, the company began to evaluate a number of network monitoring solutions. However, the proprietary solutions lacked the flexibility Rackspace required; they couldn’t get them to fit their unique environment.

The Solution

Rackspace selected Zenoss for its ease of use, scalability and ability to fit Rackspace’s environment and meet specific customer needs. Zenoss was extremely configurable out of the box, and in the few cases Rackspace needed to go the extra mile, they cracked open the code and developed very specific functionality. Not only does Zenoss fit Rackspace's internal environment perfectly, but it also allows Rackspace to offer services to its customers that its competitors cannot. Rackspace uses auto-discovery in Zenoss to detect new network devices and alert users of their existence. The Rackspace team then quickly assigns these devices to pre-defined device families based on templates. The new devices automatically inherit the monitoring parameters associated with their respective device type family. As a result, Rackspace is able to set up new network devices much faster than before.

Operational Impact

Zenoss’ centralized monitor dashboard and alerts have driven further efficiencies.
The Rackspace team now has a comprehensive bird’s eye view of their entire network infrastructure.
They use SNMP polling to detect issues and are notified via event alerting on the console.
The team can then easily track the cause through the console to resolve potential issues before customers are impacted.
Rackspace has also implemented synthetic transactions and threshold-based monitoring in Zenoss to proactively detect potential issues and resolve them before customers are impacted.