Editions ENI creates It training tools with the help of the network monitoring tool Paessler PRTG

About Editions ENI

IT training specialist Editions ENI is part of the ENI Group. Founded in 1981, the ENI Group comprises companies specializing in IT training, and has over 170 employees. All products and services benefit from a total synergy between the group's different companies: training centers for company employees, training schools for IT professions, publishers of IT books and course materials, designers of the MEDIAplus@ e-learning solution.

Editions ENI is a creator and publisher of IT training tools for the general public and professionals alike: books and course materials, multimedia tools, and e-learning.

The company ensures the continuity of service, availability, and traceability of its system and network infrastructure thanks to the in-depth, customized use of Paessler PRTG Network Monitor.

"PRTG is an absolutely fabulous solution, which we recommend on a regular basis! It has enabled us to significantly increase the availability of our services, thus improving the quality of our customer relations. Thanks to it, we can be highly proactive, which a real advantage, given our core business. Thanks to the monitoring of the time remaining on our UPS batteries, we were even able to anticipate a break in service following a power cut by workers carrying out work on our premises."

Bruno Ferec, Head of Systems, Networks, and Infrastructure, Editions ENI

Network issues at Editions ENI

Next to publishing printed books, Editions ENI offers a wide selection of digital works on its website. The company began using PRTG in 2009, with the aim of monitoring the smooth running of its network and thus guaranteeing ongoing business activity through constant site availability and avoiding bandwidth bottlenecks 24 hours a day.

Based on this successful experience, the company gradually extended and refined its use of PRTG to cover the entire IT infrastructure of the ENI Group, thus including in its network monitoring all activities such as distance learning, the company's headquarters and training centers, IT departments, and all hardware such as workstations, servers and printers, and more.

Due to the very nature of Editions ENI's business, the main challenge in monitoring their network infrastructure lies in proactivity and reactivity in the face of periods of high load when multiple users are connected, whether they wish to buy books or are in the midst of online training.

Bruno Ferec, Head of Systems, Networks, and Infrastructure at Editions ENI, is in charge of creating and setting up new sensors and monitoring alerts. He needed a solution like PRTG that met the following requirements:

Software capabilities
Easy to install and configure
Good value for money

"The richness of Editions ENI's commercial offer and services requires an extremely reliable IT and network infrastructure. The essence and heart of our IT business gives us no room for error, and optimal availability is our credo. What's more, our organization requires a solution that's flexible enough to create customized sensors capable of adapting to the different network contexts we have to manage on a daily basis. The simplicity of configuration and the proactivity generated by the alerts make our work much easier, and enable us to handle load increases with a great deal of serenity and finesse", explains Ferec.

The benefits of using PRTG

In five years, Editions ENI has gone from 500 sensors to 2,500 in place, of which 1,600 are active. Editions ENI installed the software on all servers (several hundred in total), active equipment and printers, on Dell hardware, VMware ESX, Xen Desktop and XenServer, and Datacore virtual storage servers.

PRTG monitoring covers service continuity, availability and traceability, system and network infrastructure, server, network, and storage virtualization. Almost all data lines are monitored. The company currently uses 1 remote probe in service to manage monitoring of the DMZ zone (isolated zone hosting applications made available to the public).

Editions ENI uses a number of WMI sensors to obtain specific values for hardware monitoring on servers and printers, as well as data considered sensitive for fine-tuning alert management.

The IT team also took advantage of PRTG's flexibility to adapt the software to the company's environment. Adaptations included testing the number of TSE gateway user connections, active sessions on TSI servers (WMI), and monitoring a Linux MTA PostFix mail server.

Systems engineers can access the PRTG web interface directly on special screens in real time, via emails which arrive on the intranet in the form of dashboards correlated with Google Analytics, and more.