NETWORK MANAGEMENT
Ensuring optimal performance Evolving Financial Systems By Dirk Marichal, Vice-President of EMEA, Infoblox
Any IT system relied upon for critical high speed transaction processing can be compared to a racing car. The pressure of competition means that it is being constantly tuned for optimal performance and the user interface needs to remain steady, reliable and familiar so that the driver can focus on driving, rather than what’s happening in the machine. Financial systems are continually
Dirk Marichal explains how we can ensure optimal performance in the face of evolving financial systems.
evolving behind the scenes – software and hardware upgrades, more users, more devices online, let alone the major changes involved when two or more organisations link their systems – but all the traders want is good, consistent performance from a familiar interface without a lot of distracting changes. Above all there should be no crashes or network slow-downs. It is increasingly the case that, with
the maturity of today’s technology, at least 70 percent of all system outages can be attributed to the human errors that arise when changes are made to a network, rather than component failure.
It is also tempting, but flawed thinking to assume that these figures must only be true for non-critical SME networks, not for large financial institutions that only employ the very best IT staff. One major financial institution
thought it was immune until recently, when its system crashed and thousands of critical transactions were lost. The resulting damage to confidence and reputation is still taking time to heal. Of course they had a fully redundant network with passive systems throughout poised to take over immediately on failure. But it was later discovered that one minor element had been upgraded months earlier. It had been correctly installed and tested, but one small error in the setting meant it was not precisely in sync and so it did not respond to the failure. No-one had noticed because, as it was a passive element, nothing showed until too late. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Naturally, an institution of that calibre
was on the lookout for such ‘digital landmines’ hidden beneath its smooth
operation. Like most large organisations, it had a regular army of auditors in to test the system exhaustively to locate any such errors before they surfaced as problems. But even if such audits are run every month or even every week, the fact remains that networks are adjusted and upgraded all the time, making it impossible to track and audit in real-time with manual processes. So, how does any IT department
manage to deliver the support needed for high speed trading or critical financial services, while not only keeping the system finely tuned but also maintaining compliance with the increasing regulatory burden and addressing major changes such as consolidation? The answer already exists, and is
increasingly being adopted by Fortune 500 enterprises. It is to replace the many necessary time consuming and error prone manual processes with automated, real-time change and configuration management tools. The fact that big companies were
the early adopters is simply because this is where the need for automation was first felt, because typically there is an exponential increase in network change as the company grows.
Network Management Network management is a discipline that emerged with the growth of the LAN. It began in the days when the main task was to ensure that every desk had a PC reliably connected into the office network. Each PC needed a unique IP address and these were recorded initially on paper files and later with spreadsheets as the number of PCs increased. So management of the core network services was performed and recorded manually. Meanwhile, the network was
How does IT support high speed trading while complying with regulatory burdens? 32 NETCOMMS europe Volume II Issue 4 2012
growing steadily in complexity. As well as having a PC, employees had been issued with IP phones, laptops and now smartphones, each of which needed a separate IP address. Office systems such as fire alarms and entry control that used to be monitored independently were also being integrated onto admin IP networks. This amounted to a steady increase in network complexity that was
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