1. Copyright © 2016 Splunk Inc.
Splunk @ TELUS
Operational Intelligence
Philippe Tang
Wireless Data Network Specialist

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• Canada’s 2nd largest mobile carrier, 8.4 million subscribers
• Industry leading client retention through customer first culture
• Intense focus on “likelihood to recommend”

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Wireless Data Network Specialist
— Wireless Network Operations
— 24x7 Tier 2 network and client experience assurance
— Technology commissioning, maintenance, upgrades
— Insight into network behavior
Splunk Certified Admin
Splunker nickname aka g33k: l00py
Splunk> The Notorious B.I.G. D.A.T.A.Philippe Tang

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Before Splunk: Multiple Tools
Too many tools
– Multiple EMS (Environmental management system)
Tedious data extraction and manipulation
– Required for network investigation
– Constant struggle in Correlation Analysis
Chartered with transforming the data into a useful
story for stakeholders
– Time consuming process requiring improvement
“Finding the
root cause is like
looking for a
needle in a
haystack”

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Choosing Splunk
A colleague suggested we try Splunk
– We started with the free 500MB license
– We’ve been using it for more than 2.5 years
Splunk allowed us to leverage our ability to
perform Correlation Analysis more efficiently
– All the performance data is now located within one tool
– Reports and dashboards now provide an E2E view
“Before Splunk, I
would typically
use more than 5
tools during my
investigation
now translates
into 1-2 tools.

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Splunk Benefits
Splunk makes it a one stop shop/tool
– Provides a 360 degree view of our operations
– Aggregates performance data from disparate systems
Pinpoint and diagnose problems much faster
– It’s a huge time saver
Splunk is user-friendly and easy to learn
The Splunk community is very supportive
“Our big
promise is to
provide a great
customer
experience
throughout our
service. Splunk
helps us do
that.”

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Splunk @ TELUS
100 GB license
85 GB input per day
70 users:
– 50 a month
– 20-30 daily
2 x Search Heads
1 x Main Indexer
5 x Forwarders

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Event types at TELUS
Here are some examples:
– SNMP collection engine
– Oracle
– Cisco syslogs
– Juniper syslogs
– Huawei systems
– Radio Access Network data
– Telecom performance management system
– Social Networks

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Splunk Use Cases
ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)
/ Alerts & Monitoring
Events / Data Aggregation
Visibility, Dashboards &
Reporting
Service /
Performance KPIs

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Splunk for Events / Data Aggregation
Before:
– Manual pulling of data from many places
– Various vendors and disparate systems
Now:
– Splunk aggregates the data from all these systems
– Give management and stakeholders one composite view of
the network
– Applies to performance metric logs, Twitter, Facebook,
customer experience POV, and more
“Data aggregation
was our ‘big bang
for the buck’ with
Splunk – especially
performance data
which was hugely
valuable.”

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“Our goal is a
seamless
network
connection
customer
experience.”
Splunk for Service / Performance KPIs
Monitoring voice & data services from “A to Z”
– Detect triggers as soon as mobile devices are turned on
Numerous KPIs
– Indicate how well the device is connecting to the network
 Attach rates
 Success rates
 Number of subscribers on the network
 Etc.
Anomaly detection:
– Quick diagnose and resolution of an issue

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“ITSI is becoming a
game changer,
allowing deep dive
and correlation to
happen at much
quicker rates.”
Splunk for ITSI / Alerts & Monitoring
Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI)
allows us to:
– Get to root cause analysis much faster
– Vastly improve visibility
– Easily understand the complexities of telecom call flows
– Make deep dives and correlation of data a commonplace

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“We’ve advanced
our ability to
ensure network
status far beyond
a human, manual
process.”
Visibility, Dashboards & Reporting
We want to make sure all our data points are being
monitored & we’re getting the alerts we need
The vast SNMP info we can now correctly gather
augments our insight
We created our own app (CACTI Mirage)
— Plug-in architecture, built with php/python
— Converts data into a format that can be ingested into any
system; flat file in kv format
With Splunk, we have a 365 degree view
— Bringing CACTI in was step one

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Use Case Screenshots
Twitter Machine Learning – Outlier Detection

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Use Case Screenshots
Cacti Mirage AppITSI Glass Table

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Splunk Users at Telus
Several departments are using Splunk
– Network Operations
– RF (Radio Frequency) Team
– Research and Development
– NWES for National Network Engineering Standard
– Service Enhancement
– Optik TV Team

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Splunk Words to the Wise….
Take advantage of the Splunk community and all the help
Splunk offers
— The Splunk team and Splunk users have an excellent knowledge base
— Splunk.com and IRC for more advanced questions
— Splunk usergroups (Get invited in Slack Channels)
— Everyone is open in helping you
Start with the free license – you’ll get value right away
— Download Splunk and start playing with it
— You don’t need a huge enterprise to start turning value
Start Splunking !!!

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Splunking Ahead….
Map the entire Network from E2E
– Our goal is to
 Understand the ripple effect around any one element
 Be able to drill out from one element to another
Developing a sound infrastructure means
you don’t have to have people learning
Splunk from scratch
Clustering, data redundancy

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Splunk Successes
Splunk provides E2E view of our network
– Helps with network maintenance, upgrades,
– Helps with going through deep dives in terms of data analysis and getting proper
monitoring for the whole team.
Splunk has been a huge time saver
– Automatically gathering and reporting out data.
– Spend time on other value-add projects instead of struggling with manual processes.
Splunk is the “manager of managers”
– Data aggregation:
 pulling together information from all the different systems
 putting it into meaningful reports

20. Thank You!!!