Environmental Monitoring in Preventing Business DisContinuity

1. Environmental Monitoring in Preventing Business DisContinuity Vern Williams, CISSP CBCP VP, Technology Process Networks Plus

2. A/C or blowers fail A/C turned off Water leaks Alarms not heard Human error Tampering Why monitor IT environments?

3. Early Warning A/C fails 95o Permanent Damage Equipment fails: A meltdown 85o Temporary Damage 75o Normal NetBotz reports climbing temps 95o With NetBotz Warning 85o 75o A/C repaired With enough warning, system downtime can be averted.Environment checking is the first line of defense.

4. Extent of Problem* • 50%+ suffered at least one critical network hardware failure in prior year • Major causes of unplanned downtime • 67%: environment and/or power factors • 47%: intentional or accidental human intervention * Fleishman-Hillard Survey of 150 US IT Managers – June 2001

5. Extent of Problem* • Most important factors in ensuring uptime • 85%: identifying, analyzing, correcting sources of downtime related to human error • 74%: equipment room security • 74%: ensuring proper heat /humidity levels • 52% concerned about potential damage to equipment if temperature hits 80°F; 81% concerned at 85°F * Fleishman-Hillard Survey of 150 US IT Managers – June 2001

6. Worst nightmares of IT Managers Inability to anticipate, avoid, or respond to downtime The worst nightmare is unexpected downtime. It’s mostly the unforeseen things that bring networks down. My worst fear is that we don’t have a good monitoring system for the network at this time. The temperature of the rooms – temperature control. They shut off the air-conditioning on the weekend. That’s a concern to me. Our lack of system monitoring tools. When we put servers and things in place there is no software to monitor system or hardware performance. My worst nightmare is network failure which isn’t detected in a timely fashion, compounded by invalidated resources to back up. If a failure that invalidates backups isn’t detected, we have nothing to rely on.

7. Worst nightmares of IT Managers Security Security is my biggest fear. Someone hacking from the inside would be the worst. I worry about protecting equipment from staff who aren’t supposed to have access. Network security. I think there are a lot of holes in this network, both internal and external. The worst nightmare are hackers – someone breaching the firewall, corrupting my data. For every lock there is a key. It used to be you could monitor the system once a month, now it’s once a day. I worry about access by unauthorized people. Our data is highly confidential.

8. Worst fears of IT Managers Server failure Losing SQL (Sequel Server). Losing accounting information - that would be scary. The network would be down for a while. It would keep people from working. My worst fear is the e-mail server going down. I have a mobile workforce, and a large part of the workforce communicates via e-mail, so if it goes down, we’re in trouble. Yes, it has happened and it caused major problems. I’m lucky to be here to tell about it and still have a job. Failure of key components. Key communication and server components because those would be most likely to cause longest downtime. That’s most important. I worry about servers and hard drive crashes, even when we have decent tape back-ups.

9. Worst fears of IT Managers Power failures or surges Nothing keeps me awake, but I guess the failure of our UPS system worries me. It went out last week. The biggest fear would be a power surge that our system couldn’t handle, or an extended downtime because of that. Loss of power or access to the building for an extended period of time. Probably power failure because the maintenance department has a tendency of working on power without notifying us and we don’t always know what they are doing. That is a nightmare.

10. Worst fears of IT Managers Outside service providers The telephone providers because it’s never their problem, its always your equipment. We are always down. They insist that its always our equipment. Service providers. You can’t control them – I can’t control their downtime. If their server goes down, all of ours go down with theirs. I worry about our network providers. Many times our hardware will be fine, but the network providers that we use for physical network lines will experience problems. Our biggest problem is our data service provider. All of our communications lean on our frame relay network. The vendor is unreliable. They are unable to fix problems in a timely manner.

11. Worst fears of IT Managers Catastrophic events and natural disasters Water or fire in the data system. It could destroy all the equipment and create hazards for individuals because of the electricity in the floor. Someone could get electrocuted. Disaster recovery failure. If we had a fire and the disaster recovery did not get us up and running in time, that would be really bad. We need the system up within a week, not 30 to 45 days. The disaster of a fire. I think we’re protected with everything else, but there’s still damage when a fire is done regardless if there’s sprinklers or not. Fire in our data center, concern about whether we’d be able to restore service fast enough to meet business needs.

12. Worst fears of IT Managers Staff-related issues My worst nightmare is finding the right people – staffing. It’s hard to find good people. There are a lot of technical people, and a lot of good people, but there are not a lot of good, technical people. If someone is a jerk, I don’t want them on my team. My concern is user error and administrator error. They make the mistakes, not the equipment. I have a lot of activities to complete, and not enough people to cover them all. Impact of downtime on company operations If our network goes down, our customers cannot place orders. Our business it is so competitive that any downtime costs us customers.

13. Remote Site Productivity  Lost revenue Costs to send IT Tech on site Time Travel & Lodging Loss of IT Tech support at at central site Costs to repair damaged equipment Unhappy internal customers The Downside of Downtime

14. Datacenter Loss of critical systems that support business operations Loss of productivity by users of system IT Tech time to bring up replacement systems Costs to repair damaged equipment Unhappy internal customers The Downside of Downtime

15. Automated Monitoring Benefits • Increase the bandwidth of your IT staff • NetBotz appliances serve as eyes and ears to monitor environment, equipment and network services • Avoid network & equipment downtime • Preemptive notification system • Early warning of environmental hazards • Early warning of network degradation • Ensures SLA conformance for remote sites • Improves your response-to-resolution time • Retrieve environment & equipment events & trends from your browser • Surveillance events – record of activity in critical areas

16. Monitoring Appliances Your Eyes & Ears for Environment & Equipment Monitoring

17. Monitoring of “micro-environment”: • Temperature, Humidity, Air Flow • Audio Alarms: Smoke, RAID, A/C, etc. • Alert when thresholds crossed • Camera – see room or rack remotely anytime • Pictures e-mailed when door opened

18. External Sensors • Amp Detector for power monitoring • External Sensors: Temperature, Fluid, Humidity • Dry Contact sensors • Motion detector, glass breakage, water sensor, etc. • Access over Internet or Intranet • Appliance has self-contained Web server

19. Hardware Extensions • Amp Detector • Detect overloaded circuits before failure occurs • Models for 15, 20, and 30 amp circuits • External Temperature & Humidity Sensors • Fluid Detector • Detect liquids from leaking pipes, A/C units, etc.

20. Hardware Extensions • Last Call • Dials pager #, sends “last call” alphanumeric message and last sensor readings if power or network lost • Up to 2-hour reserve w/battery • 400 model peripheral • Dry Contact Devices • Support for 3rd party sensors for Condensation, Vibration, Glass break; and more • Also UPS and HVAC dry contact alert ports

21. Images Captured and E-mailedWhen Motion Sensed or Door Opened Picture taken at 10/05/01 11:03:02 Picture taken at 10/05/01 11:03:04 Picture taken at 10/05/01 11:03:03 -----Original Message----- From: netbotz@netbotz.com [mailto:netbotz@netbotz.com] Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 11:04 AM To: frank@netbotz.com Subject: Camera Motion Alert: Motion Detected -- Report from at http://192.168.2.165, at Oct 5, 2001 11:03:01 -- Picture taken at 10/05/01 11:03:03 Picture taken at 10/05/01 11:03:04

22. Sensor Thresholds & Alerts Set upper & lower thresholds for each sensor Enable/disable alerting for each sensor by day/time Sensor-specific e-mail alert notification recipients Alert notification mechanisms:e-mail, SNMP, HTTP Post, FTP Alert Escalation 3 levels of escalation For each level, can customize number of alert repetitions and which alert mechanisms to use Alert if repeated failed logon attempts Appliance Software Features

23. Modem/PPP connection for non-networked locations Auto-upgrade software over Internet User-defined labels for dry contact sensors and values Short messaging for pagers Detailed sensor location information e.g., bottom 1/3 of cabinet Network flexibility – supports NAT, DHCP, Socks V4/5 proxy Set clock via NTP server Write log data to SYSLOG Appliance Software Features

24. Centralized Management Centralized Management, Alert Logging, Graphing & Reporting

25. Central • Scalable monitoring of NetBotz appliances across a network • Change configurations on multiple appliances simultaneously • Alert consolidation & easy retrieval • Graphing, reporting, exporting tools make it easy to analyze trends and assist in planning • Straightforward implementation and administration; Low ‘overhead’ costs

26. Central • Map View: Appliances organized into groups; each group can have different background (e.g. map) • Table View:Compact view of sensor readingsEasy to spot sensors in alarm state • Autodiscovery of NetBotz appliances

27. Configure alarms and appliance settings on multiple appliances simultaneously Choose precise capabilities to grant to each user NetBotz Central Group Operations

28. Graph sensor readings by day, week, or other timeframe Save graph or export source data Alerts easily accessible by date / appliance NetBotz CentralTrend Graphing & Alert History

29. NetBotz Software Applications Extending the Valueof Your NetBotz Solution

30. NetBotz Surveillance • NetBotz Central-basedapplication for enhancedsurveillance of IT sites • Movie-like sequences of images • Surveillance clips up to 200 frames long • If motion continues, NB Surveillance will create multiple back-to-back clips

31. NetBotz Surveillance • Live thumbnails displayed for up to 12 monitoring appliances • Colored image border indicates recent movement

32. Extending NetBotz Physical Monitoring to the Equipment NetBotz Appliance monitors room/closet environment – Temp, Humidity, Airflow– Camera Motion Sensor– Water, Condensation– Electrical current– More Advanced Device Crawlers monitor equipment’s ‘internal environment’ – CPU & Backplane Temp– Voltage– Power supply status – Fan status & RPM– More “Advanced Device Crawlers gives IT professionals X-Ray vision into the health of their IT assets.”

33. Advanced Device Crawlers

34. NetBotz Branch Checker • Checks availability of critical network services to remote site • Mail Server Check: Verify basic command responses from up to 5 SMTP servers • DNS Checking: Verify availability and response time for up to 3 DNS servers • URL Checking: Verify availability and response time for up to 3 Web servers • For other network services (up to 5), verifies TCP address + port connectivity • Alert if unable to connect to service or connection time exceeds threshold

35. NetBotz Branch Checker

36. Camera Motion Sensor Software • Add-on software motion sensor • Sensitivity is configurable • Also can specify a field of view to be ignored (masked) • Visible outline of area of image where motion detected • On sequence of pictures, outline “moves” on each picture as area of motion changes

37. Integration with leading NMS suppliers CA Unicenter TNG Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold HP OpenView Network Node Manager

38. Capabilities Summary Remote Sites • Early warning of environment threats • Temperature, Humidity, Power, Airflow, Water, Audible alarms, Broken glass, More • Track access to room – pictures automatically retained when motion detected or door switch tripped • NetBotz Surveillance – complete visual record of activity within area

39. Capabilities Summary Remote Sites • Central management software provides auto-discovery, mass configuration, alert history, trend graphs, data export • Monitor status of equipment and access to network services • Check on site anytime via Web interface – live image & environment readings

40. Capabilities Summary – Datacenters • Monitor “micro-environments” within cabinet which can be much hotter than air outside the cabinet • Monitor power consumption by circuit, avoiding an outage and enabling proactive capacity planning • Track access to cabinet – pictures automatically retained when motion detected or door switch tripped • Central management software provides auto-discovery, mass configuration, alert history, trend graphs, data export

41. Testimonials • “Can you really afford a failure? Can you afford to not know the environment conditions where you are placing your critical equipment?” — Olympic Medical Center, Washington • “An overheating condition can cause the loss of millions of dollars worth of equipment and downtime. Before installing NetBotz, we could only hope that our equipment was operating properly. The NetBotz appliance allows us to KNOW that everything is within operating parameters.” — InReach Internet, California

42. Questions?

43. Contact Information • Vern Williams, CISSP CBCP CCNA • VP, Technology • Email: vern.williams@ieee.org • Phone: 512-635-5315 • Ron Posey • VP, Sales • 512-335-8947 x 308