Customer Story
q.beyond
As an IT service provider, q.beyond rethinks the digitization of SMEs – with innovative complete solutions for the revolution of business models. Icinga is an important building block in their monitoring.
With their wealth of experience, q.beyond implements and operates the complete digital workplace as an IT service provider, including application management and cloud operations. For this purpose, the company offers end-to-end solutions, typically consisting of 80% smartly connected standard modules and 20% customized elements that flexibly meet all the requirements of different industries.
Icinga is an important building block in the company’s event pipeline. Thanks to its high flexibility, scalability and the possibility of automation it has been an extremely stable, reliable and growing component in q.beyond’s monitoring for years.
q.beyond AG, headquartered in Cologne, is a full-stack provider for IT, Cloud, SAP and IoT services with around 1000 employees at locations throughout Germany. q.beyond helps medium-sized companies from the retail, industrial, energy and logistic sector to leverage the full potential of digitalization.
The Challenge
We accompany customers from A to Z in terms of IT technology. And that means we also monitor IT from A to Z.
From A to Z
Digital store, new work, edge computing for new business models (keyword IoT), customized cloud, cyber security and Industry 4.0: Under these keywords, q.beyond offers Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. The goal is to enable medium-sized companies to focus on their core business. To this end, q.beyond takes over the implementation and support of central services, from operating systems, standard applications, Exchange and AD to SAP operation and the development of special applications.
“We always think in terms of services. And we aim to monitor many things in the same way,” says Haas. “q.beyond’s monitoring encompasses both a wide range and a large mass of objects, which presents a special challenge.”
The Solution
Meeting an MSP’s requirements
As a provider, q.beyond has certain requirements to meet, of which multi-tenancy and good scalability were the main focus in 2015 when they were searching for a new monitoring solution. The introduction of a new platform that scales better pushed the old monitoring setup to its limits and brought the q.beyond monitoring team to Icinga.
A PoC (proof of concept) was installed and it proved Icinga as the most viable option. “It is the most suitable solution because of the performance, and the ability to split the monitoring into master and satellite zones for the network constellations,” says Sven Dreher, Head of Platform Infrastructure.
A single Icinga instance can already handle many servers. Icinga comes with a built-in cluster mechanism that distributes the monitoring check workload across multiple servers. These additional nodes, called Satellites, allow the management of many monitoring objects. q.beyond uses an installation with a master zone and additional client-related zones. Separating monitoring checks into logical segments enables q.beyond to manage numerous customers.
We had decided on a new platform that scales better. That’s where Icinga’s excellent scalability suited us very well.
Automated, ready for the Future
The Icinga installation at q.beyond comprises 9000 host objects. 63,000 services are regularly checked here. “One cluster can do that!” says Dreher, very pleased. At this level of performance, the capacities are far from exhausted. Everything is set for the future!
The monitoring experts learned about the Icinga Director at a user conference in Germany. The Director fits perfectly into the new strategy at q.beyond: automate more, push away more of the daily doings to address other technical issues. For the main business that meant entirely automating what used to be done manually. “We were able to initiate that stage a couple of years ago, and we’ve been very successful there.”
We´ve had two happy coincidences with Icinga: First, we got to know Icinga2 at the right time. And when we reached the level of automation, Icinga Director came out.
Success
This was also a success story: We first started with OS monitoring, then continued with the first basic applications such as Active Directory and now have almost the entire range of private cloud catalog service applications and services that we offer through the Director in Icinga.
Stable and Reliable
Icinga´s biggest advantages? Dreher and Haas cite very good scalability and redundancy, and that it’s an extremely stable, reliable solution. “On-call duty is now relaxed because the Icinga2 infrastructure with master and satellites is stable; a beautiful state for a productive environment”, Haas says. The cornerstones of this success are stability and cluster mechanism on the one hand and automation on the other.
Supported by Experts
The consultants from NETWAYS are close to the Icinga company if something needs to be adapted. Besides, the exchange with them brings new insights and support requests are answered with a great deal of expertise. “That’s an important argument,” says Dreher. “Also when we have on-site consulting: We always find a good solution. That’s crucial, that you have technical expertise sitting across from you.”
Outcomes
- Integration of Icinga into the company´s event pipeline
- Automation of the maintenance of monitoring configuration with smart imports
- Strategic flexibility for future requirements and growth
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