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AUDI AG | Success Story

About
AUDI

With its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Audi AG is one of Germany’s oldest and most renowned automobile manufacturers. Founded in 1909 by August Horch, DKW, Horch and Wanderer merged in 1932 to form Auto Union AG. With the slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik”, “Lead by Technology,” Audi AG positions itself as a premium manufacturer for sporty vehicles, high-quality workmanship and progressive design. The company also strives for this „Lead by Technology“ with regard to its monitoring.

01.
Challenges

Eric Pfaller and Stefan Groth, who work in the IT Data Core Technologies/Monitoring department at Audi AG, were no longer sure whether monitoring with the Tivoli Enterprise Console was the right tool for the job. Two points had made them wonder: on the one hand, the immense licensing costs associated with the software, and on the other, the upcoming Tivoli upgrade, which completely overturned the previous concept. This had unfavorable consequences for Audi AG.

The IT managers at Audi started looking for an alternative. The new solution had to be a highly scalable, flexible and at the same time economical monitoring system that could be deployed in a distributed manner and guaranteed maximum availability. It also had to be easy to integrate into the existing structures.

 

02.
Solution

Modular open source solutions were considered as a surrogate. The choice fell on Icinga. The dynamic, flexibly adaptable user interface as well as the transparent, continuous development offered by the Icinga stack were the deciding factors. During the ongoing project, NETWAYS gradually replaced the previous software to ensure a seamless transition. At times, both systems worked in parallel and the delivered results were compared. Icinga had to compete directly with Tivoli – and won the race! For systems of this size, the tool literally saves weeks of tedious configuration work and streamlines the effort for future changes. Monitoring in the fast lane – so to speak.

What other advantages came into play? Problems have to be identified and assigned quickly. Ideally, therefore, a system should provide exactly the right information, as briefly and as clearly as possible. The basis for this is provided by the various customization options in Icinga. Audi, with the support of NETWAYS, has thus tailored messages and views for the respective recipients. Specifically, this means that alarms run as “custom host and service” variables in Icinga-Web, and messages are enhanced with additional information according to customer specifications. Last but not least, user access rights can be precisely controlled by authorization, down to individual hosts and services. Perfect for the different user groups at Audi.

 

03.
Success

NETWAYS was able to achieve the goals set by Audi AG with Icinga. Encouraged by the resounding success of the migration, Audi has since expanded Icinga monitoring to additional field offices in Győr, Brussels and San José, Mexico. The then scope of 50,000 monitored services was doubled in the following years. With the technical edge offered by Icinga, Audi can continue to cover the monitoring of its complex manufacturing and IT services and ensure uninterrupted coverage.

Lead by Technology – also in monitoring with the help of Icinga.

 

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