Billions
The number of security events Arctic Wolf manages in AWS
35%
The amount of money saved on EC2 costs by using the VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth EC2 RI Optimizer
Days Per Month
The amount of time saved on analyzing RIs using VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth RI recommendations
Arctic Wolf is a leading provider of cloud-based network security services, allowing companies to keep their critical data, networks, web-based applications, and devices safe. The company redefines cybersecurity through personal, predictable protection.
Challenge
Arctic Wolf was recently named the 25th fastest-growing company in North America as part of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, so rapid growth is a big challenge facing the company. Balancing scaling and cost at a pace that intense forces the Artic Wolf team to constantly optimize their business operations and cloud strategy.
Arctic Wolf has always been cloud native, having first implemented their cloud strategy seven years ago. Their large implementation of Amazon Web Services(AWS) is used to manage tens of billions of security events and provide security operations center-as-a-service functionality for their customers. Michael Hart, director of infrastructure engineering at Arctic Wolf, is constantly looking to optimize his environment to get code out as fast as possible and run it efficiently. Analyzing AWS spend has become a large portion of Hart’s daily responsibilities.
As Arctic Wolf’s cloud management matured, their previous cloud management platform (CMP) was not meeting the demands of the business. Hart decided it was time to select a CMP with better functionalities. There were new instance types that the original vendor couldn’t handle, and instance size flexibility wasn’tpart of their upcoming product roadmap. Arctic Wolf doubted the vendor’s ability to execute, and therefore ended the partnership, “We definitely didn’t get the same attention from them as we do from [VMware],” Hart shared.
The [VMware] team has been great and is always able to solve our problems in a timely manner.
— Michael Hart, Director of Infrastructure Engineering, Arctic Wolf
Solution
Based on these learnings, the Arctic Wolf team began the process of selecting a new cloud management solution. When evaluating new vendors, Hart had specific qualifications: “We have a very complex cloud workload that changes hourly. I need to have the confidence that the platform can handle that.” Not only does the [VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth] platform do so, it also produces detailed cost reports and Reserved Instance (RI) recommendations that Hart and his team can take action on.
VMware Aria Cost provides visibility into Arctic Wolf’s significant network bandwidth cost, something other technology solutions can’t do. VMware Aria Cost reports make it easy for Hart to allocate bandwidth cost to services.
Being able to pull up reports by instance type or specific tags and then attribute bandwidth cost to those instances is really important for us.
— Michael Hart, Director of Infrastructure Engineering, Arctic Wolf
Results
VMware Aria Cost has helped Arctic Wolf save 35 percent on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) costs based on RI recommendations. These recommendations save Hart days’ worth of work every month, freeing up valuable time for other business-critical tasks. “[The VMware Aria Cost] coverage numbers are so good that even our AWS reps were impressed,” Hart pointed out.
One thing that set VMware apart during the proof of concept was the team’s professionalism and expertise, which helped solidify Arctic Wolf’s decision to purchase. The team provided a report on unattached Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots, revealing a large amount of spend: “The number was very large. We had no idea we were spending that amount of money on unattached EBS snapshots.”
VMware Aria Cost has presented Arctic Wolf with many different ways to slice and dice costs, offering unparalleled levels of insight. “There’s a hundred ways you can drill into AWS costs. With [VMware Aria Cost], I can easily get that information and also have confidence that the cost reporting is accurate,” Hart said. VMware Aria Cost can dive deeper than AWS Cost Explorer to provide trustworthy, granular data.
Arctic Wolf has received additional value from working with the VMware Professional Services team for VMware Aria Cost,receiving timely responses and beneficial customizations. Professional Services consistently provides useful information, giving Hart and his team access to additional resources and industry expertise.
The response has been great from Professional Services. They always come back with strong answers very quickly.
— Michael Hart, Director of Infrastructure Engineering, Arctic Wolf
Next Steps
Gross margin is the next major IT focus area for Arctic Wolf. As Hart’s team digs more deeply into gross margin costs, he wants to get the product team involved: “I want them to be able to look at their own services and see which areas of spend they’re responsible for.” Hart’s team also plans to leverage the VMware Aria Cost automation capabilities.
The Kubernetes workload presents an interesting challenge for the engineering team, and Hart will use VMware Aria Cost to report on those costs as well. “Cost allocation in a multitenant cluster is going to become an important part of how we use [VMware Aria Cost],” Hart said.
As Arctic Wolf progresses through their cloud journey, Hart trusts that VMware Aria Cost will be there every step of the way.
INDUSTRY:
IT security
HQ LOCATION:
Sunnyvale, California
EMPLOYEES:
200-500
VMWARE FOOTPRINT:
VMware Aria Cost™ powered by CloudHealth®
KEY FEATURES:
AWS Cost Reports
EC2 RI Optimizer
Professional Services
CLOUDS:
AWS
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