Empowering ITIL Success

with WhatsUp Gold

Whitepaper
Ipswitch Inc.
Network Management Division
September 2009
INTRODUCTION TO ITIL
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a best practice framework for IT Service Management. Established in the early 1990’s
by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce, ITIL is now the most widely accepted approach to IT Service Management around the world.
Enterprises of all sizes use ITIL to streamline their processes for designing, creating, delivering and managing high quality IT services to their
business end customers.

The current version of ITIL (V3 published in May 2007) organizes the disciplines and processes of ITIL around 5 core stages of the service
lifecycle. Together, these five stages provide internal IT or the outsourced IT partner with the processes, methods, functions, roles and activities
they require to deliver IT services aligned with business objectives, and to continually measure and improve those services over time.

ITIL defines an IT service as what customers or business end users want and consume from an IT organization. IT services can range from
simple (setting up the laptop for a new employee) to complex (offering a new VoIP phone service to employees, or, launching a new ecommerce
application for external customers). To effectively manage an IT service you must be able to track all the components required to build and
deliver that service, including the infrastructure and applications, as well measure how the service is viewed from an end user perspective.
ITIL V3 defines five core stages of the service lifecycle that enable IT organizations to manage and deliver services with consistent high quality:

Service Strategy
The Service Strategy stage involves the identification and capturing of business change requirements as part of a Service Level
Package (SLP). Key processes in this stage include portfolio management, demand management and overall financial management
of IT services.

Service Design
In the Service Design stage, the service solution is created along with a Service Delivery Package (SDP) that guides its
implementation, management and improvement in subsequent stages. Key processes in this stage include service level
management, availability management, capacity management, service continuity planning, security management and service
catalog definition.

Service Transition
Once the service is created, it is evaluated, tested and validated in the Service Transition stage prior to moving it to production.
Key processes in this stage include service asset and configuration management, validation and testing management, transition
planning and support, change management, release and deployment management and overall knowledge management.

Service Operation
The Service Operation stage concerns the live operation of the service to deliver against targeted service levels specified in the
Service Design stage. Key processes in this stage include event management, incident management, problem management, service
request fulfillment and access management.

Continual Service Improvement

In the last stage, failures and weaknesses of the service are identified and fed back into the different stages to inform redesign
and redeployment for improved operational results. Key processes in this stage include the 7-step improvement plan, service
measurement and service reporting.

Empowering ITIL Success with WhatsUp Gold 1

Fig 1: ITIL Service Stages and Key Processes

Network Management Solutions and ITIL

The majority of full-featured NMS solutions provide some degree of information, knowledge and workflow support across the multiple stages of the IT
service lifecycle. The level of support they offer is dependent on the type of information collected, the extent of infrastructure and service monitoring, and
the breadth of reporting and analysis provided to drive meaningful use of the data.

In the next section we will describe the key WhatsUp Gold capabilities that make it an effective management solution for adopting and supporting ITIL best
practices in your organization. And in the final section of the white paper we will highlight the linkages between the WhatsUp Gold capabilities described
and the primary ITIL processes they support.

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WHATSUP GOLD CAPABILITIES
A comprehensive, intuitive and easy to use management solution, WhatsUp Gold’s capabilities encompass multiple technology silos, diverse
monitoring methods and several management domains – all through a single, well integrated product family.

Cross-silo Infrastructure Coverage

WhatsUp Gold offers in-depth discovery, monitoring and management of all network infrastructure and Windows, Unix and Linux servers via SNMP
v1, 2 and 3. It also provides in-depth visibility and management of any Windows infrastructure – including systems, servers and applications
that publish management information via WMI. Further, WhatsUp Gold delivers IP services performance and application usage visibility based on
synthetic transactions as well as flow monitoring and reporting.

With this comprehensive, cross-silo coverage from infrastructure devices and systems to end user applications – WhatsUp Gold enables management
of complex IT services across multiple infrastructure tiers.

Standards Based Monitoring

The WhatsUp Gold product family provides complete visibility into service and infrastructure status and health through a number of standards
based monitoring methods, including:

• Active monitoring mechanisms starting from simple up/down monitoring and extending to synthetic transaction execution and data
comparison (for example, finding the specific value of a SQL data record) - provide continuous visibility into the availability of infrastructure
devices, wireless access points and applications. Active monitoring alerts can even drive automated action to restore a failed infrastructure
device or service, through command line or custom script execution.

• Passive monitoring that listens for SNMP, Syslog and Windows event messages and identifies IT service failures in real time – enable
operations teams to rapidly troubleshoot and restore service.

• Real time and historical performance monitoring and threshold based alerting enable problem diagnostics and remediation as well as
provide the data required for long-term trending and capacity management.

• End user experience monitoring for multiple types of applications including email, communication protocols (like HTTP and FTP) and major
SQL databases – offer an objective view of service quality.

• Usage monitoring of infrastructure devices and bandwidth capacity (through Flow reporting) provides an accurate view of service
consumption by applications, users and business groups.

Broad Support across Management Domains

WhatsUp Gold provides broad support for fault management, performance management and configuration/change management processes. With
automated Layer 2 and Layer 3 discovery and topology mapping; pre-configured out-of-the-box monitoring and alert management; configuration
file backup and storage, and scheduled updates via SSH, Telnet and TFTP – WhatsUp Gold delivers the key features expected in an enterprise
monitoring solution. At all levels it delivers sufficient flexibility – which is critical to customize the measurement and monitoring of differentiated
service levels and processes demanded by your business.

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WHATSUP GOLD AND ITIL SUPPORT
With the host of powerful capabilities and broad management coverage, WhatsUp Gold provides critical support for several key ITIL service stages and
processes. The following table highlights how WhatsUp Gold can contribute to empowering your organization for ITIL success.

Service Stage Process or WhatsUp Gold Capability that Enables or Supports the ITIL Process or MPE
Main Practice
Element (MPE)
Service Strategy Demand Historical utilization, performance, error rate and service measurement data at an infrastructure and
Management IT service level, indicate the delivered quality and growth of demand across different business groups.

Portfolio
Management
Service Design Service Level Both historical and real time service performance data provide baseline information on compliance to
Management targeted service levels or SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). Knowledge of these baselines can facilitate
pragmatic and objective negotiation and agreement between business and IT on improved service level
goals.
Availability Intelligent alerts from passive and active monitor based measurements drive reactive and proactive
Management operations support.

Historical trends of alerts and error rates guide future availability targets and process improvement.
Capacity Resource and bandwidth utilization reports provide visibility into capacity trends at an individual device
Management and business group level and drive future IT investments.

Application level synthetic transactions, usage and flow volumes and related trends offer detailed insight
into service capacity estimations.
Service Transition Service Asset Comprehensive role-based discovery and backup and restore capabilities for network device
and Configuration configuration files - provide an integrated view of service components and their states.
Management
Network configuration files can be viewed and compared with standard templates to verify and validate
changes made at anytime.
Change Network device configuration updates based on scheduled tasks and actionable alerting and notification
Management on any authorized or unauthorized changes facilitate accurate configuration change control.

Detailed log reports provide a verifiable audit trail of changes made by any IT personnel at anytime.

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 Service Stage Process or WhatsUp Gold Capability that Enables or Supports the ITIL Process or MPE
Main Practice
Element (MPE)
Service Operation Event Powerful event management capabilities capture and alert on device, system, application or service
Management state changes. State changes can include outright failure, identification of degraded performance or a
configuration update.

Port-to-port connectivity maps and critical monitor settings – both inter-device and intra-device - help
diagnose false positives in state changes caused by the failure of a downstream resource or dependent
device.

Data is gathered by both active (through data collection and interrogation) and passive monitoring
(listening to SNMP trap, Syslog and Windows event messages) mechanisms.
Incident Once an event is identified and understood - automated actions and triggered tasks (like restoring a
Management backup configuration for a router or rebooting a server) enables operations staff to rapidly perform
triage and restore service.

Alert visualization, acknowledgement and multiple levels of escalation ensure service critical failures
get the right management attention and resources.
Problem Advanced troubleshooting techniques incorporate split second graphing, visual and time-based
Management correlation from different data sources (for example from infrastructure utilization rates, to flow
parameters, to configuration change events) - enable drill down and identification of underlying problem
causes. This speeds time to service restoration and improves overall service quality.

Proven integration with Service Desk systems enables operations teams to participate and follow
enterprise level problem resolution processes.
Access Role based management only allows authorized users to view data and make any monitoring or
Management configuration changes. Logged configuration change data provides detailed audit trails of what, when
and by whom it was performed.
Continual Service Service Multiple types of monitoring including infrastructure (grouped by business or service), and end user
Improvement Measurement experience based measurements provide accurate visibility into service quality and performance.
Service Reporting Over 200 out of the box reports provide in depth reporting of infrastructure and service status, health
and compliance to service levels.

Web based access and easy customization of workspaces ensure that operations staff can add their
own best practice methodology to supplement any ITIL process.

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CONCLUSION
WhatsUp Gold provides cross-silo application and infrastructure support, a rich set of monitoring methods, and single console coverage across
multiple management domains. These capabilities make it an ideal platform for planning and deploying ITIL based processes. ITIL processes
can provide substantial benefits to IT organizations including increased end user/customer satisfaction; improved service availability (directly
contributing to higher revenue and profitability); increased financial savings from lower downtime, and faster time to market with new IT services;
and improved decision making and risk management.

To learn more about how WhatsUp Gold can be your preferred solution for ITIL success – download and start using WhatsUp Gold today.

ABOUT IPSWITCH NETWORK MANAGEMENT

Ipswitch™ WhatsUp® Gold is a network management solution that reliably manages over 100,000 networks worldwide. Built on a scalable
architecture offering automated device dis­covery and network mapping, real-time network monitoring (including SNMP monitoring and WMI
monitoring), and versatile alerting, notification, and reporting functionality, WhatsUp Gold delivers 360° visibility, actionable intelligence, and
complete control. WhatsUp Gold is available in four distinct product editions: WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition, WhatsUp Gold Distributed Edition,
WhatsUp Gold Standard Edition, and WhatsUp Gold MSP Edition.

To view the Daily Network Monitor blog, visit www.dailynetworkmonitor.com.

For product and sales information, visit www.whatsupgold.com.

IPSWITCH, INC.
10 Maguire Road Suite 220
Lexington, MA 02421
Phone: (781) 676-5700
Fax: (781) 676-5710

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