Cloud Data Center CrowdStrike Improving Data Center Management and Monitoring Case Study

Intel® DCM delivers real-time power, thermal and utilization analysis, and reduces costs by improving capacity planning and avoiding extra hardware Business: CrowdStrike™ is a leading global provider of next-generation Software- as-a-Service (SaaS) endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and pre-and-post incident response services. Challenges • Monitoring server power and thermals in real-time • Identifying underutilized servers • Optimizing rack capacity and setting power policies • Identifying thermal hotspots • Ensuring server firmware consistency Solution • Intel® Data Center Manager Executive Summary CrowdStrike deployed Intel® Data Center Manager (Intel® DCM) to monitor over 4,000 devices across three data center facilities in California and Nevada. The solution provides IT administrators accurate, real-time power and thermal consumption data to deliver needed insights to manage power and address hotspots throughout the facility. This includes monitoring inlet temperatures of servers and aggregating that data to racks and groups of servers across the company’s three data centers. Additionally, Intel® DCM allowed administrators to safely raise the temperatures of some rooms, therefore increasing the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) while continuously monitoring devices for thermal issues. In addition to servers, CrowdStrike also deploys a number of backup storage devices, network equipment, and smart Power Distribution Units (PDUs) throughout its data centers. Background CrowdStrike provides compute and storage needs for across the first true SaaS based platform for next-generation endpoint protection. The highly-scalable platform supports a cloud-delivered next-generation endpoint protection service, delivering antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR) via a single lightweight server. The CrowdStrike Falcon™ platform is industry-leading and leverages cloud native architecture supported by sophisticated signatureless artificial intelligence/ machine learning and Indicators of Attack (IOA) based threat prevention to stop known and unknown threats in real time. These innovative technologies require highly scalable and densely designed infrastructure for support. Published July 2019 Case Study | Intel® DCM Provides Visibility Across Data Center Inventory for Optimized Thermal Health & Power Management at CrowdStrike Figure 1. Intel® Data Center Manager Console Processing a Trillion Data Points Each Week in Real Time CrowdStrike clients span five verticals: financial services, the public sector, retail, healthcare, and energy. Named as a leader in the Q1/2019 “Forrester Wave Report,” the company achieved the highest possible score in six criteria: Incident Response and Post Incident Reporting and Support (Current Offerings); Incident Preparation Vision, IR Retainer Vision, and Talent Management (Strategy); and Hours Performing Incident Prep (Market Presence). Falcon CrowdStrike’s patented lightweight endpoint sensor can be deployed to over 100,000 endpoints providing visibility into billions of events in real time. The cybersecurity leader relies on a high degree of scalability to support the rapid changes massive data sets require and to optimize services. CrowdStrike Threat Graph™ analyzes and correlates over 1 trillion events per week from millions of sensors deployed across 176 countries. The company provides a complete cloud-native framework stopping breaches with the combined power of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time visibility. CrowdStrike’s unique approach identifies active indicators of attack (IOAs) to detect and curtail adversary activity before a breach. Installing Intel® DCM CrowdStrike installed Intel® DCM to gain greater insight into the thermal efficiency, utilization, and health of its data centers. Intel® DCM does not require the installation of any software agents on managed nodes, and therefore does not impact performance. CrowdStrike’s IT team was impressed by the ease of use and quickly began to compile and aggregate data from its collection of servers.