Cooperative Elevator Co. is a Michigan-based cooperative that provides agricultural products and services to farmers and other businesses. The company was founded in 1915 and has since expanded to serve customers throughout Michigan.
Cooperative Elevator Co. offers a wide range of products and services, including seed, fertilizer, crop protection products, and fuel. They also receive, process, and market agricultural commodities for their member patrons. The company also provides custom application services such as spraying and spreading fertilizer. As a true cooperative, Cooperative Elevator Co. is owned by its members, who are also its customers. The company is committed to providing its members with quality products and services, as well as supporting the local agricultural community.
Cooperative Elevator Co. uses IBM Power Systems with IBM i for their busy 8am-5pm operations. To ensure integrity of their data they have used Shield Advanced Solution’s high availability solution HA4i since 2012. In July 2022, Barry Albrecht, VP of Information Technology brought in two more of Shield’s solutions AAG – Nagios Monitoring for IBM i, and EM4i – Enterprise Messaging.
Says Barry, “The Nagios monitoring was simple to set up and configure with the help of Shield’s team. A pre-loaded plug and play Raspberry Pi was sent and we were up and running in no time.” He continues, “We can keep an eye out for any upcoming issues, drill down to see exactly what is going on, check our memory usage and much more. Overall, the fact that we can look ahead, and avoid any major difficulties brings me peace of mind and allows me time to turn my busy day in other directions. In fact, the anxiety levels for all our staff have eased considerably, and we are able to be much more proactive in managing our operations.”
EM4i is an Enterprise Message Monitoring solution for the IBM i platform that allows Message Queues and Job Logs to be monitored for messages and users to be notified by Email, SMS text or using the Pushover API. This software as a service solution allows operations admins to remotely respond to problem messages, without the need to sign on to the system, or connect to the local network through a VPN. Offering secure, one-way connectivity with no inbound communication to your IBM i, and a low overhead footprint, EM4i is secure, reliable, and efficient.
AAG is the top solution to integrate IBM i systems into any Nagios monitoring configuration. With new additions being developed constantly and added to our current 115+ check commands, AAG provides an exceptional number of data points to monitor and track your IBM i systems, including product specific checks to address HA4i replication status.
HA4i is a premier High Availability solution for the IBM i and its predecessors (AS/400, iSeries, i5 etc.) using the latest technology to provide a high-performance replication environment. It allows simple, fast, and effective role-swaps between instances with the minimum of disruption.
Shield Advanced Solutions Director, Chris Hird says, “It is great supporting clients such as Cooperative Elevator Co. who have our suite of solutions. Although our products work and interact well with other providers’ solutions, they are of course a perfect fit with our own. If you are interested in saving time, being more proactive consider a monitoring solution for your IBM i. Contact us for a demonstration – you won’t be disappointed! https://www.shieldadvanced.com/Products.php”