The use of
systems and network automation is the foundation of cost
effectively delivering IT services.
Understanding how we
remotely manage IT departments is important to
understanding how we drive down the costs of outsourcing
IT departments.
The SnowFin Extended Operation Center gives the SnowFin
technical team visibility into your network. Using
advanced encryption to securely connect to your devices,
SnowFin engineers can watch, interrogate and take
control of any managed device. Once under control,
SnowFin can reproduce problems, train users, configure
systems and apply patches.
SnowFin's proactive technology in the Operation Center
sweeps through the network exercising the various
devices to insure that they are operating normally.
SnowFin uses
a highly encrypted tunnel through the global Internet to
connect to devices at a remote customer. This tunnel,
called a VPN, ensures that the only devices in the
Internet that can communicate with your network are the
two servers at SnowFin's co-located facility.
Secure
traffic sent to and from a customer's network is
triple encrypted using a 1024 bit encryption scheme.
Almost as important, information sent back and forth
is status information only; for example, the health
of the computers and network not company
confidential information.
Service
Monitoring
The "Net
Mgr" server continually scans through a customer's
network looking for problems. If a device, such as a
router, does not respond, the "Net Mgr" server opens
a trouble ticket with the Help Desk system and an
engineer is informed or dispatched.
Help
Desk
All
incidents are assigned a trouble ticket with a
unique reference number. Each trouble ticket also
has an assigned owner at SnowFin who is responsible
for making sure the problem is resolved quickly.
Each problem is monitored and, if it is not resolved
quickly, it is escalated to the level 2 engineer
team and SnowFin management.
Remote
Management
When a
problem occurs, a SnowFin engineer can pass through
the encrypted VPN connection to take control of a
device. For a PC, the engineer can even take control
of the cursor to reproduce the problem.
Software
Distribution
When a
patch or upgrade needs to be applied, the SnowFin
software depot can push updates through the
encrypted tunnel to one or more computers. New
operating systems, Service Releases, new drivers,
firmware and configurations can be uploaded quickly
onto remote devices.
