ViaSat Internet Monitoring using Sensu

The Problem

Multiple teams at ViaSat were unhappy with their existing monitoring solution which was very difficult to use. Each time had their own installation and needed expertise to use and manage this solution.

“What people love about Sensu is how easy it is to setup monitoring of hundreds of servers in just an afternoon”

— David Schroeder, Software Engineer @ ViaSat

The Solution

David, a long time Nagios veteran, liked Sensu’s pub-sub model and modern architecture. He used the extensble framework in Sensu to build a customizable, flexible monitoring service for the various teams.

Using the RBAC model and Sensu namespace feature, Viasat was able to build a shared monitoring service with a tailored solution for each group. Each team could configure their own Ansible playbook as required and had the autonomy of an independent monitoring service while using a shared backend Sensu infrastructure.