Brigham Young University-Idaho (BYU-Idaho) is a private, four-year university affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Guided by that affiliation, BYU-Idaho seeks to create a wholesome learning environment in which students can strengthen their commitment to their faith and receive a quality education that prepares them for leadership in the home, the community, and the workplace.
Founded in 1888, BYU-Idaho has around 5,000 staff, with 32,000 on-campus students and 33,000 online students. Stephen Parker, Systems Engineer, is responsible for the University's VMware vSphere Environment that runs all the mission critical applications for BYU-Idaho.
To ensure that all their vSphere hosts were operating at optimal performance, Mr. Parker needed a solution that would provide him visibility into what hosts needed patching or required configuration updates.
Another challenge for Mr. Parker was not knowing which hosts required best practice procedures installed. Visiting VMworld – VMware's annual conference – Mr. Parker spent time in the solutions exchange seeking a resolution to his issues. “I looked at quite a few products while at VMworld but the Runecast Analyzer solution impressed me the most, in particular its ease of use,” stated Mr. Parker.
Runecast Analyzer is a patented proactive VMware vSphere management solution that deploys as an OVA format virtual appliance. Runecast Analyzer uses current VMware Knowledge Base articles and our expertise to analyze the virtual infrastructure and expose potential issues and best practice violations, before they cause major outages.
Having selected Runecast Analyzer as his solution of choice, Mr. Parker immediately set about installing upon his return from VMworld. “Installation and set up was quick and simple and, in less than 5 minutes, we were receiving data back on our environment,” explained Mr. Parker.
Commenting on the top 5 critical issues Runecast Analyzer has identified for BYU-Idhao, Mr. Parker said, “We found a few hosts that did not have the NTP client configured properly. Several hosts were accepting forged transmits. Several were accepting MAC address changes. Performance issues because of VM's using old NIC's or old drivers and Port groups missing redundant NICs all were identified by Runecast Analyzer.” Without the visibility provided by Runecast Analyzer, BYU-Idaho's environment risked potential huge outages from lack of redundancy if the main NIC failed or the path was lost (as there would have been no alternate path for the network traffic and services would become unreachable).
Mr. Parker summarized the benefits that Runecast Analyzer has delivered to his organization in 3 key areas:
“Thanks to Runecast Analyzer I am saving 2-3 hours a day and it enables me to focus on more business critical aspects of running our environment.” Mr. Parker added.
Mr. Parker summarized his thoughts for anyone running VMware vSphere, “Use Runecast Analyzer to help you stay compliant with all the never ending changes out there in our world. I would highly recommend this solution as a 'must have' for any VMware vSphere environment.
The visibility that Runecast Analyzer delivers has mitigated the risk of huge potential outages for BYU-Idaho. Implementing Runecast Analyzer has delivered a number of advantages for BYU Idaho, including time and cost savings and ensuring their VMware vSphere environment operates at optimal performance.
“Thanks to Runecast Analyzer I am saving 2-3 hours a day. I would highly recommend this solution as a 'must have' for any VMware vSphere environment.”
Stephen Parker
System Engineer
BYU Idaho
Run it... you will be amazed by the findings. We always think that a lot of applications are secure by nature and by how they’ve been designed, but after deploying Runecast you really understand the gaps that you might have in your environment and it’s definitely an eye-opener.
Vice President - Infrastructure & Security at Oman Airports
