NetBrain Customer Success Story
Zero Change-Related Outages.
Twelve Months. 800+ Sites. One Small Team.
How a Global Energy Supermajor’s Network Team transformed network operations — and kept the lights on through it all
When leadership at one of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas companies asked how a single engineer had documented 30 remote oil field sites for a divestment handoff in 30 minutes — a process that used to take two weeks — the answer was straightforward: NetBrain. But that moment was just one data point in a much bigger story.
For the company’s unconventional energy division, the headline achievement is this: zero change-related network outages over a sustained twelve-month period — across a network of 800+ sites, most of them unmanned and scattered across remote locations. No incidents triggered by a failed change. No rollbacks that became outages. No post-change surprises.
That outcome didn’t happen by accident. It was built deliberately — through rigorous change validation, proactive automation, and a platform that became the backbone of how the team operates.
| 0 Change-Related Outages Over a sustained 12-month period | 30 min Divestment Documentation 30 sites. 1 engineer. Was 2 weeks. | 30 sec Device / Site Lookup Any IP. Any time. Was 4 hours. |
The Challenge: Rapid Growth, High Stakes, Small Team
When the Permian Basin experienced its resurgence, the network team found itself deploying one to two new sites per week with same-day notice. Engineers received calls that a router had been pulled off a shelf and needed to go live by end of day. Documentation lagged. Some sites had no address — just GPS coordinates and names like “XYZ Tank Battery.”
The technology environment spanned Juniper, Palo Alto, Versa, Cisco, Azure, AWS, VMware, and Nutanix, with global teams across multiple continents and an MSP handling tier-one through tier-three support.
Making changes in this environment carried real risk. Without confident pre-change validation or automated post-change verification, any network change was a potential outage in waiting. In an environment where sites are remote and unmanned, a failed change doesn’t just affect productivity — it can halt the operational technology systems that support oil field operations.
How They Got to Zero: The Change Protection Model
The zero-outage result came from building a systematic, repeatable three-stage approach to change management — one that eliminated the guesswork at every stage of a change lifecycle.
| ① PRE-CHANGE Validate baseline · confirm safe to proceed | → | ② DURING CHANGE Real-time runbook · instant rollback signal | → | ③ POST-CHANGE Continuous monitoring · catch what windows miss |
Want to implement this in your own operations?
See the Change Protection Playbook below for a step-by-step flow, NetBrain capabilities at each stage, and actions you can start using today.
“By adding the PA and network intents, I can now monitor behaviour and catch things I just wouldn’t be able to see until something goes down.”
— Senior Network Lead, Unconventional Energy Division
The Operational Shift — Key Contrasts
| Before NetBrain | With NetBrain |
| Change validation based on engineer’s best knowledge of current network state. | Data-driven pre-change baseline assessment — data-backed green light before any change proceeds. |
| Silent redundancy failures undetected until secondary path failed — sudden loss of 30 sites. | Intent-based monitoring catches peering loss immediately, before it becomes an outage. |
| Post-change validation required manual CLI checks across multiple devices. | Automated runbook validates configuration, reachability, and health instantly after execution. |
From Tool to Team Habit
“Someone one day goes, ‘Oh, let’s check NetBrain for this.’ And then it becomes, ‘NetBrain is just my default to check.’ And now we’re at the point where I hear someone go: ‘Did you check NetBrain first?’”
— Senior Network Lead, Unconventional Energy Division
That confidence expanded well beyond the division. The company’s flagship refinery — one of the largest in the world — adopted NetBrain after seeing the results. The team then hosted a two-day NetBrain training event for 25 attendees from five companies. The people who built the most capability chose to share it.
“NetBrain’s drive to do the best work possible for the customer is what causes me to be willing to champion it internally. I don’t do that with other products.”
— Senior Network Lead, Unconventional Energy Division
Twelve months. Hundreds of changes. Zero outages.
That’s not a goal. That’s proof.
The NetBrain Change Protection Playbook
Global Energy Supermajor · Unconventional Energy Division · 800+ sites · Zero change-related outages over 12 months
3 Things You Can Start Implementing Today
| ① Start Run a Quick Assessment Snapshot device state before any change. Know what’s healthy before you touch it. | ② Ask Use Runbook Companion During the change window ask: “Do I need to roll back?” — data answers, not guesswork. | ③ Schedule Set up PAF Monitoring Turn your best validation intent into a daily recurring check. One intent. Ongoing safety net. |
The Change Protection Flow
Each stage maps directly to NetBrain capabilities you can configure and reuse in your own operations.
| ① PRE-CHANGE VALIDATION · Know exact state before touching anything | ||
| Establish Baseline Snapshot device state, interfaces & routing adjacencies. Quick Assessment Runbook | Config Compliance Compare running config against your golden standard. Golden Config Intents | Go / No-Go Confirm app reachability — data-driven green light. Runbook Companion by AI |
| ↓ Change approved · execute with confidence | ||
| ② DURING-CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS · Confirm the change lands correctly — rollback ready | ||
| Execute Change Push via NetBrain template — rollback commands pre-loaded. Automate Network Change | Validate Real-Time Pings, config checks, interface status run automatically. Runbook validation nodes | Rollback Signal Instant answer: “Roll back?” — data, not CLI guesswork. Runbook Companion by AI |
| ↓ Change complete · continuous protection engaged | ||
| ③ POST-CHANGE CONTINUOUS MONITORING · Safety net stays active after the window closes | ||
| Schedule Monitoring Validation intents run daily — not just during the window. PAF Proactive Automation | Alert on Drift Know immediately if config drifts from post-change state. Intent-based alerts | Catch Silent Failures Monitor redundant links — know before the backup fails too. Custom Intent + PAF |