How Railinc Ensures The Links In Our Nation's Supply Chain: CA Spectrum and the North American Railway

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 Railroads
US 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
Interline
Operating
Waybill
Exchange
Equipment
Characteristics
Interline
Revenue
Settlement
Car Location
Information
Car Repair
Billing
Asset
Health
Alerts
Reference
Info for BOL
and 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 Lines
Umler
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

FirewallsNetwork
DB
Switches
Load
Balancer
DMZ
Routers
APP
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
FirewallsNetwork
DB
Switches
Load
Balancer
DMZ
Routers
Agent
APP
Agent
Introscope
eHealth
Agent
SystemEDGE
VMware
UCS
VAIM
ADA/MTP/CEM
On-Call

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 Notifiers
85+ Sysedge policies
125+ SPM Tests
5 Spectrum Servers9 Product Integrations
CA
eHealth
VAIM
APM
SOI
3rd Party
DataPower
F5
NetApp DFM
VMware
UCS
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
Allowed
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
DO5X220L
Hands-On Lab: How To Leverage Spectrum UI Updates
for Operational Efficiency (Surf EF)
11/18/2015 at 4:30 pm
DO5X214L
Hands-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 Talks
Intro to CA Virtual
Network Assurance
3:45pm-4:15pm
Thursday, Nov 19
Theater 5

Q & A

For More Information
To learn more, please visit:
http://cainc.to/Nv2VOe
CA World ’15

How Railinc Ensures The Links In Our Nation's Supply Chain: CA Spectrum and the North American Railway

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