Network components

Network components

“Our team is pleased with the technical knowledge and flexibility of Pandora FMS solution. We have experienced how the software has been adapted to our needs within days after our request. This flexibility is highly appreciated by our team!”

Bas Sanders, CEO at Com1 B.V., the Netherlands

THE ORGANIZATION

Almost every ICT solution depends on secure and stable connections. Therefore Com1 assists companies in different branches – from Governments to, Healthcare, Education and Event/Broadcast organisations – with Secure Connectivity.

Secure connections (wired or wireless) between all network components, systems and services are of increased importance for the continuity of a company. This requires knowledge of the products and solutions used, but also a thorough understanding of interdependencies and dependencies.

For instance different devices are often connected wireless to the network. While a wired connection is certified for its use, a wireless connection isn’t, and is therefore often underestimated, and causing lack of network stability. This is what we can either prevent or solve, depending the moment we get involved.

Com1 has extensive knowledge of designing, analyzing and implementing secured wired, wireless and VoIP infrastructures. Even if this is necessary for challenging environments, such as the Care and Logistics sector, public areas and environments with a very high user density, such as a stadium or festival site.

Based in the Netherlands, we are involved for customers and projects like Formula1, Port of Rotterdam and Wings for Life World Run (Red Bull Mediahouse)

DIFFERENT CORE-PODS

VIRTUAL SERVERS RUNNING

THE CHALLENGE

Com1 provides Managed Services and Event IT. In both sectors, we are responsible for the IT setup and thus also for its stability. Especially on the event side, the need for a flexible monitoring solution was evident. We provide network connectivity and support for many small to very large events like:

check Wings for Life World Run (2013-2019) for Red Bull Mediahouse in Austria.

check Worldwide Formula1 setup for multiple broadcasters (2004-2019) such as RTL Deutschland, Ziggo Nederland, MTV3 Denmark, Viasat Sweden, Fox Argentina, ORF Osterreich or BBC UK.

check 4-Day Marches of Nijmegen (2013-2019) Camp Heumensoord for the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

check 24H series races (2014-2019) throughout Europe and Dubai.

The Com1 Event-kit consists of 6 different core-pods; each with different purposes. They all provide Secure Connectivity, but 3 of them have a subset of video/broadcast equipment providing IPTV to events. A pod has at least a VMWare cluster, a switch cluster, a firewall cluster and a storage cluster. Depending on the event, there are between 4 and 15 virtual servers running.

To this core-pod, we can connect edge-pods or distribution-pods which effectively are switches for 1/10/40GB distribution. At the event, customers or third parties connect their equipment which needs to be monitored as well.

Many monitoring solutions were not flexible enough for our purpose. Every event is different and the setup time is usually very short (the setup can vary from taking a few hours to a few weeks). If adapting the monitoring system takes more than the actual event, we have a problem.

On top of that, we work with a subset of broadcast equipment which is usually not available in monitoring systems. That is why Pandora FMS proves its value and power to us.

We have used different monitoring software to see if they could work for us, but it did not suit us at all, since they did not manage to adapt to neither our equipment nor our events. In the past, we tried FortiSIEM, although it looked graphically really nice, it did not score high on the criteria: it was not flexible enough and it did not support non-standard hardware. Moreover, FortiSIEM took too much time to monitor and created risks to our setup and events.

WHY DID WE CHOOSE PANDORA FMS?

The Pandora FMS main features that we appreciate the most are the high flexibility it provides to our networks and system needs and of course the lower amount of time it takes to monitor.

Moreover, implementation was quick and easy. As soon as our team understood the way to work with Pandora FMS, we were capable of implementing the setup by ourselves. The information provided in the knowledgebase appeared sufficient. Our team has worked with multiple solutions in parallel, but on almost every criteria, Pandora FMS scored high.

Without it we would have been blindfolded in many cases: not detecting power outages, cable or equipment failures and reporting on performance/usage would have been impossible. Also, the high level support of Pandora FMS has helped us to implement this software, so they even made it easier for us.

Our team is pleased with the technical knowledge and flexibility of the Ártica ST team and their Pandora solution. We have experienced how the software has been adapted to our needs within days after our request.

This flexibility is highly appreciated by our team!

“The main benefits we obtained are: This flexibility is highly appreciated by our team! quicker monitoring (time to setup), lower incident resolution times and more flexibility to our different events. “