AIS Managed NMS

See what's important before it becomes urgent. The AIS Network Monitoring System that tracks performance, reliability, and configuration metrics for on-premise and cloud devices and applications. Included tools for Central Administration, Remote Management, Network Typology Insights, In-Depth Monitoring, and Faster Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis.

Keeping your organization’s technology up and running is no small feat. For IT Leaders at small- and medium-sized organizations, the challenge is even greater. Burdened with enterprise-sized responsibilities and SMB-sized budgets and resources, optimization through a tool like a network monitoring system (NMS) seems out of reach. AIS Managed NMS changes all that by helping SMBs get the most out of their current technology investments.

AIS Managed NMS allows SMBs to track and monitor performance, reliability, and configuration metrics impacting their organization’s bottom line by limiting the impact of outages and increasing the efficiency and value of technology in place. And, as a turnkey solution, AIS Managed NMS achieves this without stretching internal resources beyond capacity.

HOW AIS MANAGED NMS WORKS

AIS Managed NMS was designed to provide Enterprise capabilities to SMBs. Combined with access to an experienced team, AIS delivers an unprecedented approach to network and application monitoring and historical metric tracking by eliminating the burden on internal resources for the entire NMS lifecycle.

  • Delivery: AIS Managed NMS is delivered as a turnkey service. Experienced AIS consultants implement, configure, and maintain the NMS, while its NOC (network operations center) coordinates monitoring alerts for trends and anomalies.
  • Technology: The platform architecture utilizes both proprietary code and open-source packages, allowing for efficient development that results in faster-to-market functionality and more robust product features while maintain robust security.
  • Implementation: AIS’ unique implementation approach allows clients to be up and running on AIS Managed NMS in under a week, all without having to install a new server on their environment to collect data.
  • Integration: AIS Managed NMS is a true single pane of glass. It has the ability to aggregate data from network-connected devices and applications from all manufacturers and developers, as well as on-premise, cloud (AWS, Azure, etc.), and third-party SaaS tools, or even hybrid infrastructure architectures.
AIS Managed NMS customizable dashboards show real-time metrics, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Dashboards are designed to alert on vital metrics with the frequency and type of communication medium based on the severity of the issue or action required.

Organizations can proactively monitor and create alerts for the performance, reliability, and configuration of everything from cameras and access control panels to storage, firewalls, and servers. Some examples of metrics to monitor and create alerts for include:

  • Internet Service Provider– Proactively notifies of spikes in primary and secondary internet, providing indisputable real time data to reduce ISP resolution time before an outage occurs.
  • Power– UPS voltage data can indicate if power in a particular area is causing voltage changes that could prematurely decrease battery life.
  • Printers– In an effort to avoid any lapse in printer usage, the system can trigger an alert to the office manager if the printer toner goes below a certain threshold.
  • Storage– Monitoring the temperature of hard drives can forewarn of potential issues, as a rise in temperature can be an early indicator of failure.
  • Wireless– Optimize the performance of wireless by monitoring spikes in devices on particular access points and adjusting accordingly.

Features

Automatic discovery
  • Automatically discover your entire network using CDP, FDP, LLDP, OSPF, BGP, SNMP and ARP
Customizable alerting
  • Highly flexible alerting system, notify via email, SMS, slack and more

Benefits

With AIS Managed NMS, organizations can:
  • Eliminate internal IT resource strain with an affordable turnkey managed service
  • Reduce time spent on root cause analysis, the single largest time constraint on technicians
  • Confidently manage system efficiency across all devices and platforms
  • Increase ROI by maximizing the efficiency and value of enterprise technology investments
  • Increase employee productivity organization wide by reducing the number and impact of network outages and issues

Manufacturers

Example Project Plan

Implementation
  • Establish secure connection to monitored devices
    • Configure client firewall IPSec tunnel
  • Configure Monitoring
    • Confirm rsyslog puppet module settings for DNS service related logs are being to sent to SIEM
    • Confirm NMS DNS Service monitoring and alerting
  • Deploy configurations
    • Confirm local Puppet agent properly delivered configuration to production DNS servers
    • Ensure that local Puppet agents run successfully
  • Update Location Network Settings
    • Update DHCP scope for new DNS server IP’s
  • Finalize deployment preparation via Foreman and Puppet
    • Confirm proper Puppet module variable settings in Foreman
  • NMS Configuration
    • Setup GPO to enable SNMP
    • Setup client account in NMS
  • NMS Deployment
    • Deploy GPO to desired machines
    • Manually add any devices that don’t accept the GPO
  • Setup Standard Alerts
Recurring Quarterly
  • Review Alert Configuration
    • Update alert rules as needed
  • NMS Alert Configuration and Review
    • Review configured Device and Sensor Alerts with Customer
Planning
  • Identify Maintenance Window
    • Identify Outage Window for each location
  • Provision new virtual servers
    • Receive Azure server access from client
    • Install Puppet agent on new servers
    • Authorize new server Puppet agents in Foreman, associate DNS module
  • Design Solution
    • Confirm DNS Servers to be configured as a whitelist vs blacklist
    • Identify list of domains to test at each location to after deployment to verify expected functionality
Validation
  • Testing
    • Test/Review with Client
    • Confirm that domain accessibility results for each location match expectations established in Test Plan
Discovery
  • Identify Specific Monitoring Needs

Recurring Tasks

Review Alert Configuration
  • Update alert rules as needed
NMS Alert Configuration and Review
  • Review configured Device and Sensor Alerts with Customer
Last modified August 2, 2022