Here is a case study with Pivotal Networks, a networking design and deployment consultancy with a worldwide customer base of active networks that they continually support. Here’s a great example of a company that uses CloudShark’s collaboration features with both their Meraki install base and with remote Wireshark integration.
The Challenge: Diagnosing Advanced Networks Designed and Deployed Worldwide
Pivotal Networks specializes in the design, implementation, and management of advanced computer networks for enterprise customers. Experts in a wide range of LAN, WAN, and wireless technologies, the specialists at Pivotal know that a poorly performing or poorly secured network can put your applications and your corporate data at risk.
When designing, deploying, or supporting those networks, Pivotal makes sure they have the troubleshooting knowledge and tools to make sure that things go smoothly – and relying on packet capture from both Wireshark and their deployed Meraki equipment is critical to that support. When that support had to be handled worldwide, dealing with packet captures can become wildly inefficient.
“We needed to do remote diagnostics anywhere in the world,” said Kevin Almond, Managing Director of Pivotal Networks. “These would either be sourced by our Meraki devices in the field, or from customers who provided us with capture files directly. For the latter case, that meant we needed to have our customers perform the capture and send us the files using Wireshark installed on local machines.”
The Solution: Automatic Uploading of Captures and Collaboration with CloudShark
“All of our analysis was being handled locally,” said Kevin. “We couldn’t easily share them between our engineering teams.”
Turning to CloudShark let Pivotal integrate their existing tools into a seamless workflow, letting their customers upload captures where Pivotal’s support engineers can get to the problem immediately and easily continue collaboration with the customers experiencing the problems. Not only did it speed up workflow, but ensured that their captures were secure, as well.
“Having our own instance of the CloudShark Appliance allows us to securely store captures and collaborate very easily and seamlessly across the engineering team no matter where they are currently located,” said Kevin. “We can even get customers to send us packet captures and upload them to CloudShark all without the reliance on any local packet capture software to perform analysis.”
The Bottom Line: CloudShark Works with Existing Infrastructure and Integrates Seamlessly
“While CloudShark is primarily aimed at our Meraki estate, we have integrated the wireshark plugin onto our own monitoring tools, and can generate a direct capture to upload process now,” said Kevin.
“CloudShark has also allowed us to maintain and integrate Wireshark where required. We can do that and still have all of the great new features of CloudShark available.”
