Mesaba Aviation

Success Story

Mesaba Airlines chooses Novell technology over Microsoft, allowing it to manage more systems with fewer servers and achieving zero downtime.

Overview

Mesaba Aviation, Inc. (Mesaba Airlines), a Northwest Airlines affiliate, is the fourth largest regional airline in the U.S. With major hubs in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit and Memphis, Mesaba Airlines provides service to 98 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada and serves more than 5 million passengers each year.

Challenge

System downtime for any company is harmful, but for the airline industry it is disastrous. A simple system outage or server failure can cause flight delays and cancellations, a potential loss of millions of dollars within hours. With three separate sites spread throughout the U.S., Mesaba Airlines experienced a disjointed network environment. The organization dedicated only one server to mission critical resources, such as flight dispatch information and its airplane tracking system, and lacked an alternative backup method in the case of server or system failure. With any server downtime, employees were at risk of experiencing unreliable access to airline resources.

In addition, a decentralized network and desktop management system forced technicians to spend valuable time and money traveling to separate sites assessing and solving issues. The organization needed a disaster recovery solution to consolidate its network resources and centralize desktop administration, offering employees reliable, secure access to critical resources and improving overall customer service and satisfaction.

Novell solution

"We were sold on Cluster Services from the very beginning-we see the power and reliability of Novell solutions and continually chose them over Microsoft."

Scott Ficek
Mesaba Airlines
Director of Information Technology

Mesaba Airlines engaged Novell Consulting to guide the development and implementation of Novell Cluster Services.

"We were sold on Cluster Services from the very beginning-we see the power and reliability of Novell solutions and continually chose them over Microsoft," said Scott Ficek, Mesaba Airlines' director of Information Technology. "Novell consultants provided step-by-step validation throughout the entire process and ensured all of aspects of the offering were successfully implemented."

Novell Cluster Services enables a collection of individual network servers to work together, providing Mesaba Airlines high availability and manageability of its network resources-flight dispatch information, airplane tracking system and parts inventory. If one network server in the cluster fails, other server nodes in the cluster automatically take over the failed node's responsibility, guaranteeing continuous, uninterrupted system operation, ensuring employees have reliable access to essential resources.

The Novell solution also provides host shadowing as an ideal backup method. Each time the server writes data to a storage box at the airline's data center in Minneapolis International Airport, it simultaneously writes to another storage box at the disaster recovery site 20-miles away, ensuring double protection of airline data.

Two weeks after implementation, Mesaba Airlines witnessed the power and benefit of Novell Cluster Services. When a software glitch caused its system to go down, Mesaba Airlines experienced no data loss or downtime, avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs often experienced as a result of such system outages.

"Applications stopped for mere seconds while the backup server took over-the incident was completely transparent to our employees, and more importantly, our customers," Ficek said. "We sleep much better knowing that our resources are always available and secure with Novell."

The solution also eases network administration through single-point Storage Area Network (SAN) and cluster resource management. Novell Cluster Services leverages the power of Novell eDirectory, which stores user identities and credentials and seamlessly integrates with ConsoleOne and Remote Manager, which will allow airline technicians to control the system within the network or via a Webenabled browser, eliminating the need to travel from site to site addressing network problems.

In addition, the airline leverages Novell ZENworks for Desktops to centralize and simplify desktop management. Technicians can now remotely install and update software to the company's 900 workstations and offer standardized desktop configurations as well.

Results

With Novell Cluster Services, Mesaba Airlines has successfully consolidated, centralized and secured network resources, increasing infrastructure efficiency, reliability and simplifying administration. ZENworks for Desktops further augments the solution by simplifying administration and management of the airline's desktop environment.

The organization now has a robust, flexible solution with increased functionality and ensures continual, reliable access to airline resources, eliminating system downtime and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mesaba has also significantly lowered operational costs for travel and maintenance.

"With Novell, we experience optimal network performance and access," Ficek said. "Since implementation, we have saved a significant amount of time and money, while improving employee efficiency and most importantly, customer service and satisfaction."