Alert Check

Overview

Alert System Check:

  • Daily review & analysis of monitoring platform alerts

  • Evaluate each alert, verify technologies are operating as designed and intended

  • Indication of system health

  • Provides data related to system performance

  • Coordinate with Support Teams for alerts that require action

  • Adjust Alert platform to address errors, issues and infrastructure changes

  • Adjust Alert Platform based on Infrastructure additions, changes and removals

  • Clear out false positives

  • Provides capability for Client specific alerts to be configured, for example a client that consistently had VPN connections being dropped

  • Provides automation (scheduled tasks, reboots, clean-up)

Why Does This Matter?

Black Line needs to be aware of IT issues before they impact a Client’s IT. Automated systems are essential for monitoring IT technologies and are available 24x7x365. Having an Engineer check these systems on a daily basis ensures that Alerts are properly handled, prioritized and verified as accurate

Alert systems also provide trending information on all critical IT Infrastructure components to spot performance, capacity or usage data issues in order address root cause and proactively address issues

Alerts are often used to troubleshoot root causes and points Engineers into the appropriate direction when Infrastructure issues arise, allowing BL to address issues faster

Most critically, Alert Review is the Black Line teams method for not getting caught off-guard, making the extra effort to keep our Clients IT operating as needed.

What Value Does This Add?

  • Stability
  • Availability
  • Proactive
  • Performance

Common Problems

  • Down systems
  • Critical disk space level
  • Poor performing technology
  • Off/Unavailable IT components
  • IT Components limited in function (partial failures)

Why Is A Solution Needed?

Automated monitoring systems are inexpensive alternatives to having Engineers manually check systems or wait for failures to occur. Regularly reviewing alerts translates into Client IT having less unplanned downtime, provides proactive addressing of issues before impacting the business and aids in the troubleshooting of technical problems (thus reducing business impact and labor). Black Line’s way of protecting the Client from being caught off guard with business impacting IT issues

What To Expect

Business Leaders can expect

  • Every Infrastructure component will have an automated agent monitoring its health and will notify an engineer if there is something abnormal. The business leader can expect a trained and skilled Engineer will be reviewing these alerts on a daily basis and taking appropriate action

End Users can expect

  • Faster solutions to certain IT related problems as Black Line will be aware of the issue before an end-user has a chance to report it, or before it impacts their work.

How Does Black Line Do It Better?

IT Providers vary greatly on whether or not they use a Monitoring System to aid in general IT support. For those that do, these systems require constant evaluation, adjustment and administration in order to be valuable to the Client. Black Line ensures these systems have a dedicated resource maintaining and adjusting the Alert System so its outputs are accurate and valuable

In addition, most IT providers setup and configure Alert Systems but do not adjust internal processes to review daily, leaving large amount of alerts being ignored, confusion from false positives and are not analyzed for trending . Black Line reviews all Alerts daily, categorizes, takes appropriate action and documents for trends that may lead to failures