In an interview with Senior IT Consultant Patrick
ASTRUM IT developed the SPX Monitor several years ago. This is an important tool for graphically displaying and monitoring the status of various servers. In this interview, our colleague Patrick tells us a little more about it.
Hello Patrick, as a Senior IT Consultant, you work at ASTRUM IT in the SPX department. What exactly is the SPX Monitor?
The SPX Monitor is based on Grafana software and is used by us to monitor the servers of our hosting customers and a number of OnPrem customers (i.e. customers who host the application suite themselves, i.e. "on premise").
This involves real-time transmission of customer environment data to our monitoring system. This allows us to see at a glance what state the customer's environment is in. Here we look at the health of the server and its operational capability, e.g. where overloads occur and where these can have an impact on operation. With a little experience and a trained eye, you can quickly determine where problems will occur so that you can react in advance.
In which industries is the SPX Monitor used and what is the major advantage for our customers?
The SPX Monitor is a product that is only used by us. We use it for our customers in hosting and on their local servers. This mainly includes hospitals, university clinics, public authorities, airports and many more. Wherever the SPX time management software (a software solution for digital workforce management) is in use.
Furthermore, access can also be set up for customers. They can then independently track the physical health of the servers as well as their availability and utilisation so that they can contact us directly in the event of performance problems and optimisation requests.
The big advantage for (potential) customers is that we, as experts, learn about problems and bottlenecks in the infrastructure in real time and can work on the solution very quickly.
What exactly are the tasks of our ASTRUM IT-SPX team and what does a typical day in your team look like?
We don't have a "typical day". Our team is currently still too small for that and everyone has to be able to do everything, so to speak. However, there is already a division of activities with the corresponding level of experience.
In general, we have to keep an eye on the ticket system in order to maintain our support level. We have to respond to problems from hosting and OnPrem customers. There are also various projects. All SPX installations and updates as well as the installation of the plano software are currently still running as projects, as the installation is so extensive that it takes several days. The organisation of the team, the individual subject areas and the general overview and organisation of the projects is then my part.
We are always happy to have support in the SPX team. What do you need to know as a new team member in order to match perfectly?
Irrespective of the human element 😉 it would be important to be familiar with databases and to have already come into contact with them. Knowledge of SQL and Oracle would of course be desirable. A little scripting, interface programming and logical thinking would be beneficial. In any case, it is important to mention that although you must have a basic understanding of networks, there is almost nothing you cannot learn with us, as long as you have the necessary enthusiasm and interest to get involved in the subject.
Click here for the job description: (Junior) Technical Consultant (m/f/d) - ASTRUM IT GmbH (astrum-it.de)
Thank you very much Patrick for the interview!