Nillumbik Shire Council

End-of-life switches, and no way to see what was happening

Nillumbik Shire covers 432 square kilometres of Melbourne’s north-east, from the Yarra River up to Kinglake National Park. Around 65,000 people, 24,000 households, and a spread of council sites that includes offices, depots, community centres, a BMX track and an environment farm.

That geography is the whole story of this project. A council whose staff and services are spread across dozens of sites has a network problem that a single-building organisation does not.

The problem was not the hardware failing. It was the driving.

Nillumbik’s network switches were reaching end of life. That is a security problem before it is a reliability problem – hardware past support stops receiving firmware fixes, so every disclosed vulnerability stays open.

But the day-to-day cost was somewhere less obvious.

We lacked visibility of our infrastructure which was making it very hard to manage. Fixes were provided on an ad-hoc basis, which was time-consuming. Many of our sites also had very rudimentary connectivity which was affecting our overall communication and collaboration.

Jason Rowe, IT Systems Administrator, Nillumbik Shire

Read that again as a workload rather than a complaint. No central visibility means no way to know a site is degraded until someone rings up. Rudimentary connectivity at the satellite sites means the fix cannot be applied remotely. So a small IT team spends its week in a car, driving to sites to do work that should take four minutes from a desk.

We simply couldn’t continue with our current outdated infrastructure and we were looking to improve our security and reliability.

Daniel Tarquinio, IT Manager, Nillumbik Shire

What we built

Nillumbik ran a full procurement process and selected Onel to evaluate the environment and design the replacement. After that evaluation we recommended Aruba, and built:

• Aruba switching across the council’s sites, replacing the end-of-life estate
• Aruba access points, with secure Wi-Fi delivered to half the satellite sites in this phase and a path to the rest
• Aruba ClearPass for network access control, so only authorised users and devices can connect at all
• Centralised management, giving the IT team one console across switching and wireless rather than device-by-device administration
• AI-driven monitoring that raises an alert when maintenance is needed, before the issue becomes an outage

The deployment ran without disruption to council services.

The Onel team includes certified Aruba professionals with vital expertise in deploying and managing Aruba equipment. They have a strong record in this area and worked very hard to ensure we were able to deploy this new solution with no interruption to business-as-usual.

Daniel Tarquinio, IT Manager, Nillumbik Shire

Why Aruba, specifically

Vendor choice on a network refresh is usually argued on throughput. That was not the deciding factor here. Nillumbik needed a platform a small team could operate, that met the council’s energy efficiency goals, and that closed the security gap rather than just moving it to newer hardware.

We wanted a reliable system that was easy to maintain, as well as one that would meet our goals of energy efficiency.

Daniel Tarquinio, Nillumbik Shire

ClearPass is the part that earns its place over time. Access control that checks the device, not just the person, means the network’s default answer to an unknown device is no. That sounds abstract until something ordinary happens.

Using Aruba ClearPass has also enabled us to enhance our network security and ensure only fully-authorised devices can gain access. This became particularly obvious when we recently underwent a refresh of our printers, with each new device having to have very robust security credentials.

Daniel Tarquinio, Nillumbik Shire

A printer refresh is not a security event in most organisations. At Nillumbik it is, because the network now insists on it. That is the difference between having a policy and enforcing one.

What changed

The team can see the network. A single console across switching and wireless replaced device-by-device guesswork, and AI monitoring flags problems before users report them.

Fewer site visits. Remote orchestration of updates and fixes takes the driving out of routine maintenance for a small team covering 432 square kilometres.

Security posture improved structurally. Supported hardware plus ClearPass changed what the network permits by default, rather than adding a product on top of an environment that trusted everything.

Room to grow. Half the satellite sites have secure Wi-Fi now, with the rest planned. The platform scales into that without redesign.

The Aruba solution provides us with a comprehensive network solution which includes switching and access points. From an IT management perspective, Aruba focuses on useability and simplicity, which has greatly enhanced our visibility and overall maintenance.

Jason Rowe, IT Systems Administrator, Nillumbik Shire

Onel was fantastic to work with and very responsive. They are a trusted partner and we know they could get the job done. They knew exactly what we needed and were able to recommend and implement a new solution very quickly.

Jason Rowe, IT Systems Administrator, Nillumbik Shire

This has given us a very strong foundation for the future.

Daniel Tarquinio, IT Manager, Nillumbik Shire