Downed Data Lines No Longer Alter Biz Continuity for the Stratosphere
The Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel and Casino is one of the most prominent and famous establishments on Las Vegas Boulevard. It is owned by American Casino and Entertainment Properties, LLC (ACEP). ACEP also owns two other major hotel properties in Las Vegas, and one in nearby Laughlin, Nevada. At the core of its networking infrastructure, ACEP hosts web servers for all four properties at the Stratosphere. Room reservations (about 70 percent are made online), ticket sales to shows, Internet connectivity for guest and conference rooms, corporate email, and its property management system are centrally managed at the Stratosphere. ACEP's network security engineer, Charles Whitby, saw a clear need for a business continuity plan that included redundant Internet connections from separate Internet service providers (ISPs) that would keep business flowing in the event of an ISP or line failure. In the end, ACEP chose FatPipe technology as an easy and reliable solution.
"I remember earlier this year, fiber was cut on the (Las
Vegas) strip, and the Internet was down," says Whitby. "The fiber cut that happened on the street was having a direct effect to all businesses on the strip, including us. Data transactions came to a halt, email was down, and reservations could not be made. We had a solution, a manual failover, but this experience motivated us to reconsider how we maintain our Internet connectivity for business continuity."
Vegas) strip, and the Internet was down," says Whitby. "The fiber cut that happened on the street was having a direct effect to all businesses on the strip, including us. Data transactions came to a halt, email was down, and reservations could not be made. We had a solution, a manual failover, but this experience motivated us to reconsider how we maintain our Internet connectivity for business continuity."Prior to the FatPipe WARP installation, the Stratosphere was already equipped with two Internet connections from separate ISPs: a 30 Mbps line and a 6 Mbps line. The smaller connection remained dormant unless the 30 Mbps line failed. Stratosphere learned that a manual failover was an insufficient solution to deal with downed data line connections. It takes too much time to manually switch over IP ranges from one line to the other. Meanwhile, the ACEP organization was unable to access the service provider's network for three hours, as the ISP was down.
An automated solution
To automate the line switch over, Whitby implemented FatPipe WARP. FatPipe WARP automatically and dynamically reroutes traffic to the alternative line when the other fails. Now ACEP can switch IP ranges from failover and back again with ease. Having the ability to aggregate the two disparate lines proved to be a cost savings for the Stratosphere.
To automate the line switch over, Whitby implemented FatPipe WARP. FatPipe WARP automatically and dynamically reroutes traffic to the alternative line when the other fails. Now ACEP can switch IP ranges from failover and back again with ease. Having the ability to aggregate the two disparate lines proved to be a cost savings for the Stratosphere.
"We love WARP, especially for the DNS failover. It simplifies processes that would take days for a network engineer to do, and we don't have to be on premise to fix the problem if failure occurs. That makes WARP a very valuable product," says Whitby.
Whitby will be adding another line from a third ISP to increase bandwidth later this year. He is also planning on purchasing another WARP for High Availability, FatPipe's unit failover solution. He's already tested the scenario, and is happy with the result.
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