IT Service Management at CERN: Data Centre and Service monitoring and status

Abstract

The Information Technology department at CERN has been using ITIL Service Management methodologies [1] and ServiceNow since early 2011. In recent years, several developments have been accomplished regarding the data centre and service monitoring, as well as service status reporting. The CERN Service Portal, built on top of ServiceNow, hosts the CERN Service Status Board, which informs end users and supporters of ongoing service incidents, planned interventions and service changes. The Service Portal also includes the Service Availability Dashboard, which displays the technical status of CERN computing services. Finally, ServiceNow has been integrated with the data centre monitoring infrastructure, via GNI (General Notification Infrastructure) in order to implement event management and generate incidents from hardware, network, operating system and application alarms. We detail how these developments have been implemented, and how they help supporters monitor and solve issues and keep users informed of service status. Also, we highlight which lessons have been learnt after the implementation. Finally, possible future improvements are discussed.