Naples International Airport monitors
its IT infrastructure with PRTG

Naples International Airport relies on PRTG Network Monitor to monitor its IT infrastructure

Gesac, the Naples-Capodichino management company, chooses the software solution by Paessler to guarantee the business continuity of airport operating systems.

The company

Gesac – Campania Airport Services Management – is the management company of the Naples International Airport, a reference case for the functionality and safe operation of the infrastructures of the entire airport system. The company, which today has about 400 employees, was established in 1980, with a public majority, on the initiative of the Municipality of Naples, the Province of Naples and Alitalia. To become the main gateway for southern Italy and to make the passenger experience easier, Gesac recognizes three fundamental values: innovation, to improve the quality of the service and the experience of the passenger; the essential nature of processes, based on simplicity and fluidity for concrete and measurable results; responsibility for behavior and results to stimulate the spirit of initiative, trust and cooperation.

IT infrastructure and challenges

Holding a role of vital importance for the very operation of airport operating systems, the IT infrastructure of Naples-Capodichino Airport is extremely complex. Gesac is responsible for the management, coordination and technical-operational control of over 1000 devices distributed on servers and PCs that govern security-critical systems, such as surveillance cameras, in order to guarantee constant levels of quality and reliability.

Being able to have a solution to monitor, diagnose and manage state-of-the-art network infrastructures is therefore crucial for such a complex reality as the airport. In fact, there are many needs, above all the possibility of conducting punctual analyses to guarantee the continuity of the infrastructures, in order to promptly intercept any critical issues that, if not resolved, could bring the systems to collapse.

Before adopting PRTG Network Monitor, the monitoring of sensors, campus and airport infrastructure was entrusted to a network management console and various intrinsic application solutions offered by different vendors. However, this did not allow unified monitoring and required parallel control of different solutions, each with its own procedures. The result: a discontinuous monitoring with a considerable dispersion of time and energy, a particularly wasteful and inefficient process no longer able to meet the needs of a constantly evolving company.

The solution

In light of the changed needs, Gesac started the search for a solution that could ensure the unified monitoring of every aspect of the IT infrastructure, taking into consideration various alternatives on the market including the Paessler offer. Following a pilot project launched on a limited number of devices, he finally identified PRTG Network Monitor as the best technology in terms of quality, efficiency and reliability, relying on the continuous availability of updates and a high level support service. Among the other reasons that led Gesac to choose PRTG Network Monitor, also the wide market diffusion, the ease of implementation and integration with external systems and the extreme simplicity of use.

PRTG Network Monitor is installed on a virtual server, Windows Server 2008 R2, 4 CPU, 16Gb Ram for monitoring servers, switches, routers, Wifi controllers, access points, DB servers, application servers, UPS, virtualized environments and application solutions entire IT infrastructure of Naples International Airport.

In confirmation of a consolidated collaboration, inaugurated with a 2500 sensor license, Gesac carried out the last upgrade of the solution in 2017, switching to the XL1 / Unlimited version.

Today the company uses around 8000 monitoring sensors (including composite), including DNS, Folder, FTP, HTTP, IMAP, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, NetFlow, Oracle SQL, Ping, POP3, RDP, Share Disk Free, SMTP, SNMP, SSH, Syslog Receiver, VmWare, Windows and WMI.

Available on different interfaces (Web, Enterprise Console and iOS and Android apps), PRTG Network Monitor also monitors on LAN, WAN and airport websites.

The most immediate requirement that PRTG Network Monitor is able to answer, through continuous analysis and surveys of the monitored devices, is the prompt identification of any potential system anomaly reported through real-time alerts and warnings, together with a constant measurement of resources used and performance achieved.

"Thanks to PRTG Network Monitor, we can finally have a unified, automatic and continuous monitoring of the airport network and guarantee rapid and punctual interventions."

Domenico Ciervo, ICT Manager of Gesac

The results

Once the integration of PRTG Network Monitor was completed, Gesac immediately recognized a variety of advantages in terms of efficiency and quality of the services offered to the passenger, also from the point of view of IT infrastructure security.

"Gesac increasingly focuses on innovation to improve the quality of services offered and the experience of passengers handled every day by the Naples International Airport," comments Domenico Ciervo, Gesac ICT Manager. “Thanks to PRTG Network Monitor, we can finally have a unified, automatic and continuous monitoring of the airport network and guarantee rapid and punctual interventions. This means being able to prevent simple weakness from becoming real crises, guaranteeing the entire infrastructure an unprecedented business continuity. Just think of a typical situation in which, in the absence of adequate monitoring, potential network problems could cause a sudden interruption in the displays indicating flight schedules and the serious inconvenience that would result in both for passengers and in terms of damage to the image of the airport itself."

Through the monitoring of entire processes, PRTG Network Monitor provides concrete support for the reporting of the first hints of critical issues by means of pre-established warning thresholds that allow rapid interventions in operation and upstream resolution of potential threats, as well as the processing of retroactive analyses in the phase of problem management, to the restructuring and optimization of IT resources and to the identification of possible memory leaks and other problems at the CPU level, threads and handles displayed in PRTG dashboard maps.

The software solution has also brought significant benefits in terms of application consolidation, reduction of infrastructure investments, better service continuity, increased software efficiency, which translated, within a few months, into an overall hardware efficiency and a subsequent reduction of the technical perimeter monitored.