About National Examination Council of Tanzania

The National Examinations Council of Tanzania (NECTA) is a government agency responsible for managing and conducting national examinations. It is also responsible for facilitating, administering, and supervising foreign examinations across the country.

 

Challenge

The organization faced challenges in effectively managing and monitoring its IT network infrastructure and applications/services, potential downtime and latency, disk usage issues, and network performance issues.

 

Objectives

Once we gained insight into the challenges faced by our client and their requirements, we concluded that they’re looking for a solution that can fulfill the following objectives –

• Real-time Monitoring – Improving network performance and security by implementing a solution that provides real-time monitoring and alerts for potential issues.
• Automation – Streamlining network monitoring processes by automating data collection, analysis, and reporting.
• Scalable Solution – Adopting a solution that could easily scale with their expanding network infrastructure and adapt to future requirements.

 

Solution

NECTA’s requirement for a network monitoring tool made it clear that they’re looking for a solution that would provide its IT team with more insights into network performance and enable them to track data from all different types of infrastructure equipment to understand how the network is operating and to monitor for potential issues that could lead to bigger problems resulting in downtime.

Taking into consideration the client’s requirement, Ducara suggested the implementation of the PRTG Network Monitor, which is a comprehensive and user-friendly network monitoring tool that offers features like:

• Monitoring of the network in real-time providing instant notifications and alerts for any potential performance on security issues.
• PRTG’s automation capabilities enabled users to automate data collection, analysis, and reporting, reducing manual efforts and minimizing errors.
• PRTG offered the scalability required to accommodate the user’s expanding network infrastructure, ensuring it could adapt to future growth and complexity.

 

Our Approach

The approach followed by Ducara’s team for implementing and configuring PRTG solutions at NECTA network infrastructure includes:

1. At first the scope was decided to describe Ducara’s responsibility to supply, install, configure, test, and commission the PRTG Network Monitor for monitoring IT network infrastructure and applications/services.
2. Then, we performed a thorough assessment of the NECTA’s network infrastructure to measure the network’s actual effectiveness by identifying gaps, collecting and analyzing comprehensive data about the network’s health, including any indications of deteriorating network performance, existing network challenges, and potential areas for network optimization or enhancement.
3. The solution was then installed and configured by the team of experts, integrating it seamlessly with NECTA’s network infrastructure. In the process of configuration, approximately nine networking devices have been configured with PRTG for monitoring, which included relevant and necessary devices like web servers, windows servers, etc.
4. After the installation of the PRTG and configuration of networking devices, SNMP service has been enabled/configured on all the devices and various sensors have been added. Around 200 pre-defined sensors are offered by PRTG with the flexibility to configure them as per the requirements. Some of the general sensors offered by PRTG include CPU Load Sensor, Bandwidth/Traffic Sensor, MySQLv2 Sensor, HTTP sensor, etc.
5. After the full implementation and all configuration, a User Acceptance Test has been performed where the clients/end users are involved in testing the product to validate the product against their requirements. In total seven use tests were performed to check the working and efficiency of the implemented solution. General use tests included checking of functioning of notifications/alerts for CPU Load, Disk Storage, Network Interface, device Availability/Uptime, etc. The outcomes of the testing scenarios were documented and provided to the authorized personnel.
6. We also provided training to NECTA’s staff, ensuring they were proficient in using and managing the PRTG network monitoring solution. Ongoing support was also offered to address any queries or issues.

 

Result

The implementation of PRTG provided NECTA with real-time visibility into their network, enabling them to proactively identify and address any performance issues promptly. Also, automation of data collection and reporting reduced manual efforts and improved efficiency, allowing IT staff to focus on more critical tasks.