The MSP's network also supports different types of secure VPN (virtual private network) products and technologies, including CIPE (Crypto IP Encapsulation), HTTP-S (Secure HTTP), IPsec (IP security) and SSH (secure shell). This also lets SiteRock's customers connect to its regional operations centers with their existing secure VPN methods. "Supporting different kinds of secure connections from our customers rather than using a single VPN approach increases the complexity of our infrastructure but lets us do it their way," Paul says.

SiteRock recently installed a new Cisco Systems-based routing and switching infrastructure for these various VPN interfaces, replacing its harder-to-manage Linux VPN server. The Cisco routers sit at the edge of SiteRock's service gateway site, where the main monitoring and alarm-processing servers reside. The site is linked to the company's Reliability Operations Centers, where its network analysts monitor the customers' networks.

The MSP's gateway server converts the different types of alarms into a unified view for the company's network analysts. SiteRock built the gateway using Computer Associates International's Unicenter TNG alarm server package as a foundation and Remedy Corp.'s Action Request System for processing trouble tickets in its service offerings. "We had to develop a gateway that takes alarms from these different channels and creates a model of a customer's site and keeps in sync with them," Paul says.

Another key element in SiteRock's architecture is its XML-based SLAs (service-level agreements). SLAs can be a headache for MSPs to maintain, especially when multiple customers are making weekly changes to their networks.

So SiteRock rewrote the service specifications in XML to make it easier for network analysts to make changes and take action on network problems at a customer site. XML provides a template structure--rather than unstructured paper documents--for SiteRock's SLAs. This form automatically matches an alarm to the appropriate action, such as rebooting a troubled server at a specific customer's site. SiteRock also runs an online SLA-notification-table application based on XML where customers can record any changes in their networks via a Web interface. "Then changes are instantly updated in the SLA," Paul says.

Meanwhile, SiteRock plans to add a proactive monitoring application to its service for more automated, rather than reactive, monitoring.