In 1913, Fred Wells purchased a horse, delivery wagon, a few cans and jars, and the goodwill of a business from a dairy farmer in Le Mars, Iowa–all for $250. Since then, Wells’ Dairy has grown and evolved over the years, including the establishment of its nationally known “Blue Bunny” ice cream in 1935.

Fast forward to 2007. Despite its down-on-the-farm roots, many experts cite Wells’ Dairy’s state-of-the-art production facilities as among the most technologically advanced in the industry. The company manufactures and packages more than 2,000 products in almost every size, shape, style and flavor imaginable–from ice cream and frozen novelties to fresh dairy products like milk, yogurt and sour cream.

The company’s Blue Bunny-branded items are distributed across the nation and in many foreign countries. The firm operates five plants in three locations. More than 3,000 production, sales, office and support personnel make up the Wells’ Dairy family.

In order to support these facilities, technology and people, however, the company needed a network-management solution that could keep up with increasing demands on its network infrastructure. The IT department was not expanding as rapidly as the rest of the company, and therefore it required a solution that could help to alleviate the workload in order to improve productivity and reduce operational costs.

“We had to deal with very time-consuming issues,” says network architect Jim Kirby, “including spending excessive amounts of time and energy tracking down improperly configured devices, locating new servers and tracing IP addresses to switchports. Spending an inordinate amount of time locating issues made it difficult for the IT staff to be proactive.”

Then, Kirby learned about a proactive network-management solution, NetMRI from Netcordia. “We weren’t originally looking for this particular solution, but NetMRI is one of those products that once you see it in action, you wonder how you can live without it,” he says. “We saw a good ROI, and that was all it took to make the decision to install it on our network.”

Issues identified and solved

NetMRI is a proactive analysis solution that monitors, detects and reports on network issues before they become problems. A complement to traditional network-management systems, NetMRI enables Wells’ Dairy’s IT staff to identify and solve potential network issues with routing, subnets, voice over IP (VoIP), virtual LANs and multiple other areas, quickly and simply, and before they become problems. It provides built-in expert network best practice rules to comprehensively maintain the health of a network, while providing crucial analysis information in a simple, precise and efficient manner.

Netcordia’s centralized platform plugged right in to Wells’ Dairy’s existing network and gathered data from every network element–regardless of vendor. Immediately upon installation, NetMRI’s built-in analytics engine began notifying Wells’ Dairy of potential problems and vulnerabilities. It discovered duplex mismatches and misconfigured devices, located newly installed servers and automated standard network-management functions, including the ability to trace and associate IP addresses to switch ports.

While other tools concentrate on a particular capability, NetMRI takes configuration, performance, security, compliance and change into consideration when performing analysis. For example, NetMRI proactively notifies the IT staff of changes that might have a negative impact on the security of the network, including tracking down MAC addresses that were flagged by another security program. This allows them to locate the physical device on the network rapidly and avoid network degradation or a security breach.

“NetMRI provides us with a complete audit of the network on a daily basis,” Kirby offers. “The automated reports provide great insight to the overall health of the network. The network scorecard gives a quick snapshot of our network strengths and the areas that need attention, allowing the IT staff to compare current configurations with previous ones.”

Telephony analysis provided

Wells’ Dairy also utilizes NetMRI’s IP telephony module to analyze and troubleshoot VoIP calls on the network. The IT staff uses its “path diagnostics” diagram to visually see every network element between a phone call and the final destination to indicate any disruptions in the transmission, including where Wells’ Dairy has congestion.

Now, if a user calls to say there was an issue with a VoIP call, the staff can trace that path and see exactly where the call had issues. NetMRI gives a hop-by-hop chart that lists each device used and where the potential problem is along that path.

“Since implementing NetMRI, the IT staff has improved productivity and significantly reduced operational costs, resulting in more efficient management of this large enterprise network,” Kirby adds.

The product’s audit functionality provides a complete inventory of multivendor networks and detection of out-of-compliance network elements. Its analysis function detects performance, configuration and policy anomalies in real time, as compared against corporate and built-in industry best practices. NetMRI automates the data collection, analysis and the resolution of verified problems.v

NetMRI simplifies the complex challenges of managing the network infrastructure so that Wells’ Dairy can focus on what’s important–selling ice cream across the country and around the world.

For more information from Netcordia (click here)