Case Study: Armstrong Coal Company achieves better network visibility and capacity planning with Plixer Scrutinizer

NetFlow helps coal company manage its remote locations

Armstrong Coal Company, Inc., a mining operator with 10 sites and more than 600 employees, needed better visibility into a complex, distributed network that was difficult to monitor across remote locations. With limited context for troubleshooting and capacity planning, the IT team struggled to understand traffic patterns and justify network decisions. Plixer’s Scrutinizer was evaluated as a NetFlow analysis solution to help address these challenges.

Plixer configured Scrutinizer to collect NetFlow data from Armstrong Coal’s Cisco routers and switches, giving the IT team a centralized dashboard to monitor bandwidth, traffic types, protocols, and potential security issues. The solution helped Armstrong Coal proactively identify unauthorized or non-business traffic, such as a user saturating a link with Pandora, and supported longer-term planning by showing when links were fully utilized by legitimate business traffic.

Armstrong Coal Company, Inc.

Tim Johnson

Director of IT