how railinc ensures the links in our nation's supply chain: ca spectrum and the north...

How Railinc Ensures The Links In Our Nation's Supply Chain

CA Spectrum and the North American Railway

Chris Knowles

DevOps: Agile Ops

Railinc

Sr Enterprise Monitoring Engineer

DO5X130S

#CAWorld

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Abstract

The railroad industry has its own application economy that drives

productivity, operational efficiencies and most important, safety on the

rails. In this session, learn how Railinc, the application service provider

and largest source of accurate, real-time data for the U.S. railroad

industry, is using CA Spectrum® to not only ensure critical information is

always available for immediate decision-making, but also improve safety

measures to keep employees and residents safe. Railinc is using CA

Spectrum to guarantee the services behind our transportation system

that moves the goods and services we rely on every day are always

available.

Chris Knowles

Railinc

Sr Enterprise Monitoring Engineer


Who is Railinc?

Railinc is an innovative and reliable resource for rail data, IT and

information services.

We connect the freight rail industry, support business processes and

provide business intelligence to help railroads and rail equipment owners

and their business partners increase productivity, achieve operational

efficiencies and keep their assets moving.


Our Customers

Class 1 RailroadsUS operating railroads with $452.7 Million or more of revenue

Private Car Owners Owners of railroad equipment who are not railroads

Third Party Logistics Entities involved in the transportation of goods but not the transportation provider or shipper/receiver

Other Railroads Smaller railroad holding companies, Class II, or Class III railroads

Others(Shipper, US Gov’t)

Other customers not in the categories above


The Freight Railroad Industry

• 568 freight railroads

• 200,000+ miles of road

• 28.4 million+ carloads (2012)

• $81.7 billion in revenue (2011)

• 1.425 million freight cars in service

Industry Facts

• Union Pacific

• BNSF

• CSX

• Norfolk Southern

Class I Railroads in the Industry

• TTX

• GE Rail

Other Major Companies

• GATX

• First Union

• Kansas City Southern

• Canadian National

• Canadian Pacific


Railinc, A Few Partners, A Few Customers


What Business Are We In?

Software as a Service

– Information Technology for freight rail in North America

Integration Brokerage

– Central Hub to Store, Process, Package and Distribute data

InterlineOperating

WaybillExchange

EquipmentCharacteristics

InterlineRevenue

Settlement

Car LocationInformation

Car RepairBilling

AssetHealthAlerts

ReferenceInfo for BOLand Waybill

Creation

Single Industry Source for NetworkFreight Rail Information


Railinc By The Numbers

8 Product Families

32 Product Lines

40+ Rail Industry Committees

285+ Personnel

$65M Revenues

2,500 Customers


Railinc Product LinesUmler

Early Warning

Umler Registrations

Umler Utilities

Asset Health

Car Repair Billing Data Exchange

Damaged-Defective Car Tracking

Equip. Health Mgmt. System

Locomotive Repair Billing

Interline Services

Customer Identification File

Embargoes

Forward & Store

Gateway Operations Services

IRFs & Publications

Interline Settlement System

Rate EDI Network

Interline Data Exchange Services

Tracing

RailSight

Steelroads

Train Query

Train Tracing

Messaging

Network Connectivity Services

Switch Services

Umler Special Services

Commercial Reporting Services

AAR Support Services

Car Service Car Hire

Mergers

Waybill Sample Contracts

Asset Utilization & Compensation

Car Hire Deprescription

Car Hire Data Exchange

Car Hire Compensation Services

Loading Authority (OT-5)

Ramped

Tank Car Mileage Equalization


Facts and Challenges

• Railinc Facts– Subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads (AAR)

– Railinc headquarters is located in Cary, NC

– Board of Directors are CIOs from Class I RR’s and AAR

– Messaging Hub for North American Railroad Industry

• Challenges

– Technology and Performance

– Cost Effective Efficient Operations

– Keeping the North American Railroad Industry moving 24x7


Message Queue Channels(high volume customers)

> 500K messages per day

FTP Customers (approx. 200 customers big and small)

APLS

BNSF

CANC

CSXT

CN

CPRS

KCS

NS

PROCOR

TTX

UP

US Customs

Wachovia

SHIP Express

GE

GBRX

> 200K messages per day

Web Customers

Client

Channels

Internal

Application

Queue Managers

Additional Railinc

Applications

Advanced

Queue

Managers

Advanced

Message

Brokers

Standard

Queue

Managers

Advanced

Queue

Managers

IBM Integration Bus

WAS

Server

s

TomCat

Servers

GIS / SI

Message Translation

FTP

Servers

MPLS / VPN

Railinc Enterprise Environment


FirewallsNetworkDB

SwitchesLoad

BalancerDMZ

RoutersAPP

Introscope BigBrotherNagios

Applications Network Systems

Railinc Enterprise Monitoring – in the beginning…


• Fully integrated solution• Visualization across all IT silos• Proactive alerting• Capacity planning and projection• SLA Monitoring and Reporting

Everything fixes itself before it breaks!

Never miss an SLA!

What Do We REALLY Want?


Railinc Enterprise Monitoring - Today

FirewallsNetworkDB

SwitchesLoad

BalancerDMZ

Routers

Agent

APP

Agent

Introscope

eHealth

Agent

SystemEDGE

VMware

UCS

VAIM

ADA/MTP/CEM

On-Call

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What’s special about our Spectrum?

Keeping it Simple! (and supportable)

Almost exclusively out-of-the-box implementation – just works!!!


Railinc by the Numbers – in Spectrum terms!

2+ Personnel

2,500+ Devices

14+ SANM Notifiers85+ Sysedge policies125+ SPM Tests

5 Spectrum Servers9 Product Integrations

CAeHealthVAIMAPMSOI

3rd PartyDataPowerF5NetApp DFMVMwareUCS

Railinc By The Numbers – In Spectrum Terms


Spectrum Deployment at Railinc


PROD

Spectrum Deployment at Railinc

OneClick

SRM

PRIMARY

SpectroServer

DEV TEST

PROD

SpectroServer

OneClick

SpectroServer

OneClick

Railinc HQ DataCenter

DEV / DR

SECONDARY

SpectroServer

OneClick

No WAY!

Allowed

Allo

wed

ALL Notifiers 1

Notifier


Everything is on the glass!

Make monitoring part of all life cycle processes and procedures!

- New equipment provisioning should include “Add to monitoring”

- Nightly discoveries of all our primary subnet ranges keeps us honest

- Review your “New Devices” container

- Monitor your Monitoring…

There CAN’T be only ONE!


Services “dashboard”

• Modeled services on the Service Dashboard• Service modeling directly populates SOI


Global Collection Topology views

• We have these for each primary team• 146 Global Collections across DEV, Test and Production


Some useful things…

SANM notifier set scripts

Add a link to your OneClick server in the message

Add the name of the notifier that sent the alert!


Use your device location

Using VAIM / SystemEDGE

• Pick an attribute that nobody else uses

• Use your agent to populate that with something meaningful to YOU!

• Use your attribute to populate your Global Collections and SANM


Get buy in from all teams!

Help teams enable SNMP on their platforms

Point everything to Spectrum!


Reactive

Proactive!

What has this done for us?

• One place to view and manage alarms(well almost…)

• Break the silos

• Intelligent alerting

• Catching things before the break!

70% Reduction after hours

paging


What’s next?

• Upgrade to Spectrum 10.1! • 64 bit…Gotta have it!• Web Console… Gotta have it!!• Running in DEV now!

• SOI deployment

• APM Dashboards…


Recommended Sessions

SESSION # TITLE DATE/TIME

DO5X220LHands-On Lab: How To Leverage Spectrum UI Updates

for Operational Efficiency (Surf EF)11/18/2015 at 4:30 pm

DO5X214LHands-On Lab: CA Spectrum 10.0 Deep Dive - 64-bit,

Network Virtualization and GIS Map View (Surf EF)11/19/2015 at 2:00pm

DO5X221L

Hands-On Lab: Experience How To Leverage CA Spectrum

10.1 Support for Wireless LAN Controller and Access

Point Management (Surf E-F)

11/19/2015 at 4:30pm


Must See Demos

Integrate Event Mgmt, Fault Isolation and Root Cause Analysis

CA Spectrum

Theater 5

CA UIM

CA Unified Infrastructure Management

Theater 5

Deploy SDN/NFV without Adding More Monitoring Tools

CA Virtual Network Assurance

Theater 5

Ensure Service Delivery Across Complex Infrastructures

CA Performance Management

Theater 5


Follow On Conversations At…

Tech TalksIntro to CA Virtual Network Assurance

3:45pm-4:15pmThursday, Nov 19Theater 5


Q & A


For More Information

To learn more, please visit:

http://cainc.to/Nv2VOe

CA World ’15

http://cainc.to/Nv2VOe

http://bit.ly/1wbjjqX