Customer Success Stories
You really can believe what VSV tells you . . . A customer monitoring an IP network saw some pretty unbelievable numbers in a Vital Signs display—they said his IP interface was running at 100% capacity, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Then at the terminal running that incredible throughput, we found the error. The PC's backup program was looping, running one backup after the other with no waiting.
VSV lead the customer to clear up this application error, allowing the MIS department to serve more customers with the same resources.
Let your system adjust to daily changes in the workload . . . Your network workload probably varies over the day, the week, the month. VSV's reports on CSM usage let you tune your system to fit those workload patterns.
During business days, a VSV customer needed to move large numbers of small FTPs. At night, a few really huge files need to travel. So days required lots of small CSM buffers and nights required more large buffers. Because they knew what CSM buffers were needed, and when, the customer could adjust the system so that users experienced no slowdowns or bottlenecks.
TCPIP has to be flexible if it is to deliver the goods in a timely way. CSM statistics from VisionNet show you what to do with that flexibility.
Avoid trouble, see your FTP result codes . . . Every FTP transaction leaves a "Result Code" that can help you see trouble approaching. VSV tells you what those codes mean. Just hit PF1 at any FTP display. (Explanations are also available in RFC1213, but who has time to look that up.)
Take the VSV customer whose client's transactions, said the FTP codes, kept asking for a protected record. The customer found an application error that was creating inaccurate bills for customers.
The FTP result code, explained by VSV, was the insight that helped to solve this nasty customer-relations problem.
You want security. VSV provides it . . . Because they had detailed data on FTP traffic, a Vital Signs customer found a hacker violating security and reading internal company revenue flows. VSV data enabled the company to confront the snooper and tighten its firewall.
Kill the bugs early. . . A systems programmer was developing a new IP application. He couldn't see that the application was failing to correctly terminate its IP connections. Had the application gone to production, the entire system would have slowed to a crawl.
But the programmers MIS department had Vital Signs VisionNet and used it to monitor socket state activity at the application's IP address. Normally, socket state data are boring—TIME WAIT, for example, is almost always zero. This time however, the LPAR that was testing the application showed high numbers under TIME WAIT.
Because of VSV, the problem got fixed during testing.
With VSV Output Technology Solutions Explains Capacity Issues to Customers
9/1/2000
Output Technology Solutions produces upwards of 130 million pieces of first-class mail a month-bank statements, phone bills, confirmations of on-line stock trades.
Customers send OTS financial data. OTS processes the data, prints the statements, and mails them. A big East Coast bank, for example, sends records regarding the 401K accounts of the employees of an airline and the members of a large labor union. OTS then creates and mails all their individual quarterly statements.
Data arrives at OTS by hundreds of different routes, says Mark Arnaldo, manager of technical services for the company's Westwood, Mass., facility. "A 'diverse environment' is one way to put it," he laughs. "'Wild and crazy' is another.
"We have to be prepared for anything. One customer is dialing into the Internet and doing an FTP to us. A couple others dial directly into us. Then there's dedicated circuits of 56 K, twenty-some-odd T1s, and now we're starting to get T3s.
"You name the protocol, we've got it coming in. The traditional SNA-type stuff. All sorts of FTP traffic over TCP/IP. There's practically one of everything," says Arnaldo. "I've got one company—it's kind of funny—half their group sends data by FTP, half uses NDM, and they both use the same link, a T3."
To keep track of all that traffic, Arnaldo uses Vital Signs VisionNet.
"It's the statistics I need VSV for," says Arnaldo. "Vital Signs is excellent for statistics.
"And now with TCP/IP growing like crazy, I've got to be able to provide statistics on that, same as I do on the SNA side. That's where the new release of VSV comes in.
"I need to know how much a circuit is being used, so when a customer asks if we can handle more data, I can say we have plenty of disk space, but I don't think the customer's line can handle the traffic," Arnaldo explains. "And I can't just say I think they're going to be in trouble. I have to be able to point to usage statistics and say 'Here's your problem. Here's what will happen.'
"Sometimes a customer will call up and complain that we're not moving fast enough. 'Why won't your computer run any faster?!' they say. Well it's not our computer. It's their line. And it helps having the statistics to prove it. 'There's a T1 between us,' I can tell them, 'and it sat at 100 percent utilization for four hours. Data's not going to get here any faster unless you put in a T3.'"
Arnaldo can also tell the story of when Vital Signs VisionNet saved a sale:
An existing customer wanted to send OTS a new batch of data for a new job of work. But the customer worried that OTS couldn't handle any more. It seemed the line was full already. "They were thinking they were going to need another T1, maybe a T3," says Arnaldo. "I explained that no, you don't need to spend that kind of money for this one little job.
"It was just a matter of showing them the statistics. We showed them snapshots: Here, nothing. Here, nothing. Here, the transmission starts, 10:05 in the morning. Now watch. It goes for two hours, and at 12:15 it ends. The line is idle the rest of the time," Arnaldo explained. "We can take another transmission, just so long as it's not at the same point in time."
Arnaldo finds VSV easy to install and learn. He says he had to scratch his head a few times during the initial installation, but "it was minor stuff." Since then, upgrades and maintenance releases "have just slipped right in."
How does VSV compare with the IBM alternative, the NPM utility? "Talk about hard to use. Oh my!" says Arnaldo. "I've used NPM in other shops. When I came here I knew better. I don't want it."
And Arnaldo admires the tenacity of SDS technical support. "At one point we had what we thought was an IBM problem, then a Vital Signs problem, then an IBM problem—we we're going back and forth. It was SDS technical support who called IBM and worked it out. It didn't matter to them who's problem it was."
