Monitoring
When ants secure the WLAN
The basic prerequisite for modern production is a comprehensive WLAN that is always available. Bechtle uses a central monitoring system for its customers to detect and rectify performance drops or failures of individual components in good time.
Stiebel Eltron is one of the leading companies in building technology and green technologies. What began in 1924 with the invention of the immersion heater continues today with water heaters, heat pumps and ventilation systems. To ensure smooth production, the company works with Bechtle Bielefeld for its IT - especially for WLAN.
In order to have a constant overview of all managed systems, the IT system house Bechtle uses monitoring tools in service projects. Until recently, open source solutions were often used or tools already in use by the customer. This meant that Bechtle employees had to regularly familiarize themselves with new monitoring tools, which resulted in a lot of time being lost. In order to standardize monitoring, the company opted for a trial of PRTG Enterprise Monitor and initially used it to monitor the internal systems in Bielefeld. Sven Pöttner, Service Manager at the system house, had already been using the freeware version of Paessler's monitoring solution in his private environment for some time: "The tool provides the full range of functions of the full version with no less than 100 sensors. This - and thanks to the uncomplicated setup of the software - made using this monitoring solution in my private network a lot of fun and provided real added value. When it came to finding a tool for use in our customer projects, it was clear to me that this tool should be on the shortlist." After the test phase, PRTG was chosen.
Pöttner and his team saw the main advantages in the fact that the monitoring tool works completely agentless. In monitoring, agents refer to services that are installed on the device to be monitored. Many monitoring solutions require agents. Agentless systems use standard protocols such as SNMP, WMI or FTP to monitor devices and applications. There are arguments for and against both methods - in the case of the evaluation at Bechtle, agentlessness was one of the reasons for choosing this monitoring solution. Apart from that, the use of agents is usually quite costly and poses a problem for Bechtle as a service provider. After all, external services have to be installed and operated on the customer's hardware. This is often difficult to communicate to the customer, as on the one hand additional load is generated on the devices and on the other hand appropriate channels must be opened for communication.
Other decision criteria were that the monitoring tool is easy to install and operate as Windows software and is uncomplicated and comparatively inexpensive in terms of licensing and price. "Another plus point for us is that the manufacturer's support is included in the software maintenance. We have already used it frequently in customer projects with positive results," says Pöttner. "In addition, the remote probes are a feature that offers a lean, secure and simple way of setting up monitoring at the customer's premises. With the central tool, we can bundle all of our customers' monitoring in a single solution and thus have an overview of all relevant information in one dashboard."
VPN or remote sample at the customer's premises
The PRTG Core Server runs in the Bechtle Private Cloud. Option 1 (orange in the picture) is classic via VPN to the customer network. The local probe, which runs on the same system as the PRTG server, collects the monitoring data via VPN. In larger environments, it may also make sense to set up a remote probe on the customer side to relieve the local probe or to bundle the data traffic. With option 2 (blue in the image), a remote probe is installed in the customer network. The Windows service collects monitoring data from the customer's network and sends it to the cloud server, where the data is analyzed. The probe sends the collected data directly to the server via a shared port in the firewall using TLS encryption. This has two advantages: On the one hand, no VPN needs to be set up - saving effort, costs and hassle. On the other hand, there is the security aspect: the probe is installed directly by the server and a clearly defined port is only released for probe-server communication instead of a more risk-prone VPN tunnel. "Thanks to the remote probes, the tool enables remote monitoring scenarios to be set up quickly. It has also impressed us across the board. This has also been confirmed by our experience in the first customer projects," says Sven Pöttner. One of the first customer projects in which the monitoring tool was used was the provision of the WLAN service for Stiebel Eltron.
SLA can be assigned at any time
For production in Holzminden, the WLAN building coverage was set up in such a way that critical areas are covered redundantly, while less critical sections are simply covered. The PRTG Enterprise Monitor saves all monitoring data in the original interval for any period of time. This enables Bechtle, for example, to prove compliance with the SLA (Service Level Agreements) to Stiebel Eltron at any time. With the predefined Cisco sensors, it was easy to integrate the WLAN setup into the monitoring.
In the event of faults or failures, immediate intervention by the Bechtle experts responsible is crucial. The monitoring tool has been connected to the ticket system for this purpose, and the responsible service technician immediately receives a notification in plain text.
Locate machines and devices at any time
Maps can also be created. On the dashboards, the devices are located in front of a building floor plan so that the location of the faulty device is immediately visible if on-site intervention is really necessary. "Thanks to the maps, we can very easily create customized dashboards in HTML format. This ranges from the management overview, which shows the availability and status of the most important services and processes, to dashboards for helpdesks or technicians who need a detailed view," says Pöttner. Driverless transport systems play a special role in Stiebel Eltron's production. The so-called ants operate largely autonomously. They are not continuously controlled by a higher-level service, but only receive transport orders via WLAN at defined checkpoints. Bechtle Bielefeld uses this situation not only to be continuously informed about the status of the ants, but also to improve the monitoring of the WLAN. The ants are monitored with the monitoring tool used by means of a simple ping. If no ping is returned, this can be an indication of WLAN problems. In addition to the WLAN service, the customer also receives status monitoring of their AGVs.
Customers often already have existing monitoring tools in use and want or need to keep them. With a suitable solution, the existing tools can be integrated into the central monitoring system. Following the successful use in the first customer projects, Bechtle is planning to increase its use of PRTG Enterprise Monitor in the future. "Bechtle Darmstadt also relies on this solution for monitoring. We will use synergies in the future and work together more intensively. This will enable us to create joint expertise, reduce costs and ultimately offer our customers better service," says Sven Pöttner.
You might also be interested in
ESTIA aims to strengthen Europe's cloud
New tech alliance for EU sovereignty
Twelve companies, including Dassault Systèmes, are founding the European Sovereign Tech Industry Alliance (ESTIA). The initiative aims to strengthen Europe's technological independence and define requirements for sovereign cloud services. The start...
read more...Deutsche Telekom and Nvidia launch one of Europe's largest AI factories
With the Industrial AI Cloud in Munich, Deutsche Telekom and NVIDIA are creating one of the largest AI factories in Europe. Companies can train AI models, carry out simulations and access 10,000 GPUs.
read more...Leveraging data potential with AI and streaming
Huge data treasures are still lying dormant in many manufacturing companies. And yet it is high time that these treasures were unlocked. There is often a lack of resources and capacity to make data usable in real time. Streaming production data can...
read more...More awareness of noise
Dematic offers solutions that are tailored to different cloud environments and reduce environmental impact through reduced material consumption and improved energy efficiency.
read more...Generative AI in the automation environment
The mechanical engineering and automation industry is undergoing profound change. This transformation is being driven by more volatile global trade, geopolitical crises and increasing market pressure, which demands greater agility, technological...
read more...Rigid data structures have had their day
The traditional data center is no longer the center of data. A hybrid cloud storage approach enables manufacturing companies to both meet the current requirements of data-intensive processes and future-proof their infrastructure.
read more...Software as a service in three stages
CIM Database Cloud is a new out-of-the-box solution from Contact for end-to-end digital product development.
read more...How production can benefit from AI
Together with AI technology, IIoT networking makes it possible to better control machine parameters and optimize quality with predictive quality. Downtimes and set-up times can also be further minimized. Cloud platforms also make these technologies...
read more...More expertise for digital engineering
Altair, a computational science and artificial intelligence (AI) company, has acquired OmniV, a technology from Michigan, USA-based software company XLDyn.
read more...