Frontier Airlines is a low fare airline that provides service from its Denver hub to 47 destinations in 29 states, spanning the nation from coast to coast and to seven cities in Mexico and one in Canada. As the second largest jet carrier of Denver International Airport (DIA), Frontier's fleet of Airbus jets averages 250 daily system-wide departures and arrivals, serving 24 out of the top 25 destinations out of Denver. The company employs about 4,800 people in cities throughout North America.
Moving Bits to Move AirplanesFrontier's MPLS WAN is a critical resource for the airline. It connects the company's data center in Denver to offices and airports throughout North America. It supports both important customer-facing applications, such as seat assignment, electronic ticketing, curbside and online check-in, as well as all the logistical and management applications necessary for running a major airline.
But even as the network was rapidly expanding to support Frontier's business objectives, performance was slowly degrading, and the company's traditional SNMP device-based management system couldn't give the IT staff the visibility they needed to meet their Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
"It was like looking at our network through a straw," says Geri Carolan, Director of IT Infrastructure for the airline. "Our jets may fly at 30,000 feet, but our network management system could barely lift us above the runway in terms of delivering a network-wide overview of performance and utilization."
Managing SLOs Across the NetworkFor assistance, Frontier turned to INS, one of the world's leading providers of IT consulting and software solutions. After a thorough audit of the airline's network and objectives, INS recommended and spearheaded the installation of an ACE Live appliance at Frontier's data center in Denver.
"In essence, the ROI on the [ACE Live] appliance was immediate," says Geri. "We gained insight into the source of application performance problems that was basically impossible with the old solution, since the SNMP system couldn't see into the MPLS network and give us traffic details by application and location. We were able to start solving problems right away."
"Most of all, [ACE Live] enabled us to quickly establish a baseline for performance on all critical applications-we knew all we needed to know about network health within a month. This has made it much easier to manager our Service Level Objectives. We can see at a glance where we're not meeting those objectives and address the problems right away, often before there are complaints."
Managing the WAN Vendor
"In addition, we were able to start using [ACE Live] data right away to better manage the WAN vendor, since we could see real details of problems that had been invisible to us before. This was invaluable in helping us extract the maximum value from our contract with the MPLS provider."
The IT staff was able to correlate slight changes in load on the MPLS network with significant increases in latency and packet loss. The appliance's extensive reporting capabilities not only helped the WAN vendor resolve the problems, but also served to help Frontier assess the success of the vendor's efforts.
Managing Upwards
The reports furnished by the ACE Live appliance also helped Geri convince the CFO and other non-technical managers of the need for a network upgrade.
"What [ACE Live] quickly showed us was that the network as then provisioned wasn't capable of meeting our SLOs in the long run. And with the reports I was able to create, I could show the CFO and line-of-business managers exactly why, and why we had to spend the money I was asking for to fix the problem."
She explains that the ability of ACE Live to present performance and utilization metrics in terms of their impact on the business and critical resources was what really clinched the deal. "The CFO and other managers were very impressed with the clarity of my presentation, thanks to [ACE Live] reports."
Troubleshooting Day-to-Day
Even as Frontier goes forward with its network upgrade, relying on ACE Live to gauge the success of their efforts, the appliance plays a central role in day-to-day troubleshooting as well.
"Early on, [ACE Live] alerted us to virus-like activity at one airport that was impacting the entire network. We were able to quickly pinpoint the cause and put an end to it, something that would have been nearly impossible with the old management system."
Asked what she would say to a peer considering the ACE Live solution, she replies, "Buy it now! With [ACE Live] my staff is far more productive and spends far less time fire-fighting, so they have more time for the projects that advance our corporate objectives. We've got a better handle on our SLOs, can better demonstrate our contribution to the business, and just generally have better control over the network."
Buy it now! With [ACE Live] my staff is far more productive and spends far less time fire-fighting, so they have more time for the projects that advance our corporate objectives. We've got a better handle on our SLOs, can better demonstrate our contribution to the business, and just generally have better control over the network.
Geri Carolan, Director of IT Infrastructure, Frontier Airlines
In our performance engineering practice, we use [ACE Live] to establish a network and application performance baseline so we can make the right recommendations to our customers about their IT infrastructure. [ACE Live] not only deploys quickly-often in less than an hour-but delivers far more data than the MIB2 collectors that most baselines are done with. Our customers really appreciate the in-depth analysis we can deliver with [ACE Live].“
Gerry Carver, Principal Consultant and Partner, INS