Metropolitan Police Agency Assures Services During Data Center Transformation with NETSCOUT

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
• Networks & Connectivity - Software-Defined Networking

• Security & Public Safety

• Business Operation

• Process Control & Optimization
• Public Warning & Emergency Response
• Remote Asset Management

• Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
• System Integration

The metropolitan police agency was facing a challenge of upgrading and consolidating their data center with a new Cisco ACI SDN architecture. The agency uses NETSCOUT’s nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform to continuously monitor high-speed fiber connections running from data centers to the city’s police stations. However, network and application performance delays are unacceptable in any enterprise environment. For police officers on the front lines, however, performance anomalies in the radio network or crucial laptop law enforcement applications can truly translate to life-and-death matters. The agency’s Network Operations team made the strategic decision to take advantage of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) software-defined networking (SDN) solution to simplify their future data center operations. This solution enables the agency to support a new generation of distributed applications over existing physical and virtualized environments. Simultaneously, they planned to consolidate data center operations.

The customer in this case study is a metropolitan police agency that ensures the safety of millions of local residents and annual visitors. The agency has improved overall police business efficiency by embracing innovative digital technology at nearly every operational level, ranging from the back office to police vehicles patrolling local streets. Police officers and civilian employees use more than 100 production-level information systems in conducting daily business. The agency uses NETSCOUT’s nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform to continuously monitor high-speed fiber connections running from data centers to the city’s police stations. nGeniusONE also assures availability for mission-critical police services, including General Packet Radio Service mobile data, Voice over IP communications, police databases, and even applications used by officers to run DMV and warrant checks from their laptops.

The agency relied on recommended practices and next-generation service assurance technology provided by long-term partner NETSCOUT. They selected a service assurance solution based on the InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliance family and nGenius 5000 series packet flow switch (PFS) technology. The agency is using NETSCOUT smart data for nGeniusONE smart analytics, providing a cost-effective monitoring solution to assure the ACI data center project before, during, and after migration. In consolidating two data center operations into the new facility, the agency can use NETSCOUT to establish service reliability and responsiveness baselines and migrate applications, compute, network, and storage workloads with confidence. nGeniusONE smart analytics quickly detect and resolve application and service performance problems without requiring modifications to existing workflows. The NETSCOUT solution provides pervasive end-to-end visibility and deep analytics into the ACI SDN and software-defined data centers.

• The agency is realizing the full benefits of ACI SDN technology in their new data center by using NETSCOUT smart data and smart analytics to minimize associated implementation risks.
• With the NETSCOUT solution assuring the data center performance, the agency can leverage their ACI SDN technology to more quickly deploy applications and introduce new services at lower costs.
• The agency’s use of the NETSCOUT solution enhances long-term IT efficiencies by providing superior network monitoring and application performance management.

• Reduced IT spend through data center and vendor technology consolidations
• Improved police application deployment time assured by NETSCOUT