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2 N ET WORK MON IT ORIN G AN D MAN AG EMEN T

1EDITORS NOTE A New Generation of Managementand Monitoring Tools Emerge

Ten years ago, network management and

network monitoring were two sides of the same

coin. Both operations were critically important,

but because each one was based on separate

and often proprietary tools, getting a central-

ized view of both processes wasnt easy.Today, network managers know they must

have a comprehensive converged management

and monitoring toolset to provide the real-time

performance data they need.

That requirement has been driven by several

trends, among them the need to monitor net-

work devices and boundary performance, the

and ensure WAN service-level agreement com-

pliance. Application performance monitoring

(APM), meanwhile, has evolved into a thriving

mission-critical business segment of its own.

A full-featured APM product should not only

register where performance is suffering, but

pinpoint where a problem may lie.

Yet even as identifying network performance

issues becomes more critical, the expansion

of virtualizationfrom servers to network

devicesthreatens to make the task more

challenging

As a result, its critical for network admin-

istrators to deploy monitoring and perfor-mance tools that can track both physical host

resources and virtualized network infrastruc-

ture assets, especially as application-aware and

software-defined networking deployments gain

traction.

There is a lot to like and a lot to know about

the new generation of WAN management and

monitoring tools. This TechGuide helps you

understand how these tools have evolved and

gives network managers insight into how they

can ensure optimum performance at their orga-

nization. n

Chuck Moozakis

Site Editor, Networking Media Group


3/12

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2ENTERPRISEWAN STRATEGY The Enterprise WAN NetworkMonitoring Strategy Evolution

The discrepancy between network moni-

toring and management has blurred now that

technology, service and labor changes have

taken place in the enterprise. This change re-

quires an update to your WAN network moni-

toring strategy.

HOW A WAN NETWORK MONITORING

STRATEGY HAS CHANGED

Network connections are the fabric that de-

livers IT services and supports collaborative

relationships in the enterprise, and any failure

in the network is likely to cut users off from

critical applications and destroy team produc-

tivity. From the onset of enterprise networking,

a critical requirement for network operations

managers and planners has been to monitor

network behavior to detect trends that could

compromise performance and to respond

to problems proactively. This requirement

remains real today, but the way it is addressed

is evolving under the pressure of technology,

service and even labor changes.

One reflection of the evolution of monitor-

ing is its collision with network management.

A WAN network monitoringstrategy has al-ways required the analysis of traffic in real

time, but most management systems support

at least some form of real-time traffic analy-

sis too; so the distinction between monitoring

and management may become more cloudy. As

network management systems improve, in fact,

monitoring has tended to focus on areas where

general statistical information about network

performance may not be enough.

WHAT SHOULD YOUR WAN NETWORK

MONITORING STRATEGY ACCOMPLISH?

Most enterprises link WAN network monitor-

ing with one or more of three specific missions:
http://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/feature/WAN-monitoring-Should-you-outsourcehttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/feature/WAN-monitoring-Should-you-outsource


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2ENTERPRISEWAN STRATEGY nApplication monitoring:Monitoring at theapplication level to measure the service qual-

ity actually delivered to the application. Thisis growing out of a need by network and IT

management to provide specific performance

guarantees to line departments they serve.

nNetwork device monitoring:Monitoring at

the device level to determine the health of

network components and the extent to which

their performance matches capacity plansand intra-enterprise service-level agreements

(SLAs). This is the primary focus of network

monitoring for enterprises with large net-

work investments.

nBoundary monitoring:Monitoring at the

trunk/connection level to detect faults, man-

age SLA commitments by WAN service pro-

viders/vendors, and troubleshoot in the case

of failures. This boundary monitoring is

on the rise as enterprises adopt increasingly

complex IP and Ethernet services whose SLA

terms are more complicated to verify.

WHAT FORM SHOULD YOUR WAN

NETWORK MONITORING TOOL TAKE?

For each of these WAN monitoring strategies,

there are two high-level options:

n

A deviceor interfaces management informa-tion base (MIB) can be monitored.

Or

n A probecan be used to gather specific infor-

mation at a lower level, perhaps even inde-

pendent of the devices involved.

Network management tended to be based on

Simple Network Management Protocoland on

Boundary monitoring is on the rise as enterprises adoptincreasingly complex IP and Ethernet services whose SLAterms are more complicated to verify.
http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/definition/service-level-agreementhttp://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/management-information-basehttp://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/Simple-Network-Management-Protocolhttp://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/Simple-Network-Management-Protocolhttp://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/management-information-basehttp://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/definition/service-level-agreement


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2ENTERPRISEWAN STRATEGY MIBs ten years ago, while network monitoringtended to be based on proprietary probes and a

separate set of central tools to analyze the data.The desire to centralize all network man-

agement/monitoring tools into a single cohe-

sive application set has converged monitoring

and management at the network operations

level. As enterprises have moved to deploy

management strategies, theyve adopted a

strategy of using a high-level console to display

network health overall, with the ability to drilldown to isolate specific problems. HPs Open-

View platformis an example of a management

console that can integrate both high-level man-

agement and lower-level monitoring tools.

Tom Nolle
https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-10%5e36657_4000_100https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-10%5e36657_4000_100https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-10%5e36657_4000_100https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-10%5e36657_4000_100


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Virtualization


3APPLICATIONPERFORMANCE Evaluating Your Application PerformanceMonitoring and Management Options

Ultimately, the work of IT is about pro-

viding services to users, and the primary ser-

vicesfrom a users perspectiveare storage

and applications. Users notice only a few things

about applications, most of which boil down to

two questions:

1. Does the application do what I want well?

2. Does the application do what I want

quickly?

So, delivering applications with good perfor-

manceis a key indicator of ITs performance.

Thus, IT has great interest in application de-

livery optimization and in application perfor-

mance monitoring and management(APM).

WHAT APM DOES

APM approaches application performance

managementfrom several perspectives:

nServer:How does an application perform

with respect to its use of compute, memory

and storage resources? Does it use them

in ways that waste no more than is accept-

able and deliver acceptable response time?

nNetwork:How do traffic flows between

the user and application front tier act

on the network? How do flows between

application tiers and application compo-

nents behave?

nDesktop:How does the application desktop

client perform?

The goal, of course, is to be able to say how

well applications are performing, and if they

are not performing well, where the problem

lies. Your application performance monitor-

ing and management solution should be able

to pinpoint whether the problem lies:
http://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022564/WAN-management-Look-at-application-performance-management-not-uptimehttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022564/WAN-management-Look-at-application-performance-management-not-uptimehttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Networked-application-performance-management-Where-to-starthttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Networked-application-performance-management-Where-to-starthttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Application-performance-managementhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Application-performance-managementhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/opinion/Dirty-jobs-Application-monitoring-tools-for-network-administratorshttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/opinion/Dirty-jobs-Application-monitoring-tools-for-network-administratorshttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Application-performance-managementhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Application-performance-managementhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Networked-application-performance-management-Where-to-starthttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/Networked-application-performance-management-Where-to-starthttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022564/WAN-management-Look-at-application-performance-management-not-uptimehttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022564/WAN-management-Look-at-application-performance-management-not-uptime


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3APPLICATIONPERFORMANCE n in the architecture and provisioning of theapplication;n

in the network between users and apps; orn on the client side.

Having figured out where a problem lies can

be critical to taking successful corrective action

and to not wasting resources fixing the wrong

things.

CHOOSING AN APM PRODUCT

One of the key decisions to make is whether

to run application performance monitoring

with or without agents. An application per-

formance monitoring product with agents

involves software on servers and clients or

specialized hardware in the network, whereas

agentless APM does not use management

agents on systems or the network. Agentless

monitoring can be passive (examining net-

work packets for information about what

applications are doing) or active (using stan-

dard data access protocols such as SimpleNetwork Management Protocol and Windows

Management Instrumentationto poll servers

and switches and routers for information).

Using an agent can get the most information,

but also entails installation of the agents,

complicating configuration management and

subsequent software lifecycle management for

the agents, which can introduce additionalcost and effort. Going agentless limits you to

the data available via standard management

interfaces.

WHERE TO LOOK IN YOUR APM

However you approach APM, it is increasingly

important to look at the entire range of behav-

ior, from server and network hardware all the

way up to application protocols and specific

Having figured out where a problem lies can be criticalto taking successful corrective action and to not wastingresources fixing the wrong things.
http://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022665/WAN-application-performance-management-Automate-or-controlhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022665/WAN-application-performance-management-Automate-or-controlhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692772.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692772.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692772.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692772.aspxhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022665/WAN-application-performance-management-Automate-or-controlhttp://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/news/2240022665/WAN-application-performance-management-Automate-or-control


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3APPLICATIONPERFORMANCE application operations (i.e., how specific com-mands and transactions perform and how cli-

ent and server communicate).Application performance problems can arise

at any layer. A network card or router interface

card may be malfunctioning, or two devices

connected to one another may not be com-

municating properly due to misconfigurations.

Problems not rooted in the network can result

from poor application architecture or coding.

Understand that it can be very difficult todirect corrective action toward those causes

without being able to rule out the network. It

may be necessary in some environments to run

specialized code to track the performance of

individual applications running on the serverand even of modules or routines within the

applicationsto understand application per-

formance problems.

Ultimately, ensuring application delivery re-

quires APM at some level, either to determine

a baseline of good performance when things

are working well, for future comparisonor

to identify the causes of problems, direct theirsolution, and verify their having been resolved.

John Burke


9/12

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Virtualization


4NETWORKVIRTUALIZATION Maximizing Network VirtualizationEfforts in the Enterprise

Nearly 60% of organizations have noted a

slowdown in their virtualization initiatives,

according to a recent Nemertes Research study.

The complexity of systemsspecifically the

complexity of network configurationsis often

cited as a key barrier to the continued adoption

of virtual networks. The ability for enterprises

to configure virtual networks and to fully de-

fine these configurations in software is the

key to boosting virtualized network adoption

again. As your organizations network virtu-

alization effort goes forward, here are some

tips that should help you maximize those ef-

forts and tie them into server and storage

virtualization.

nTIP 1: EVALUATE YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL

STRUCTURE AND OPTIMIZE YOUR NETWORK

POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

Advancements in storage, server and network

virtualization have allowed enterprises to do

things in the data center that simply werent

possible on a physical network. Yet the sepa-

ration in many organizations between IT

and network teams hasnt enabled them to

reap the full rewards of these new capabi-

lities. Many network teams view virtualiza-

tion as the responsibility of the server team

and are not in a hurry to embrace virtualized

switchesor virtual network appliances. Many

are still happy to have traffic come out of the

virtual infrastructure, route it through physi-

cal network components and then go back into

virtual space. IT organizations should make

sure that the roles, responsibilities, policies

and procedures of these teams are clarified

and revised to embrace virtualizations capa-

bilities. Its only a matter of time before virtu-

alization takes hold in networking the way

it has with servers and storage, so resistance

is futile.
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240174286/Resisting-network-virtualization-technology-is-like-keeping-Token-Ringhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240174286/Resisting-network-virtualization-technology-is-like-keeping-Token-Ringhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/tip/The-new-virtualization-The-storage-and-network-hypervisorhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/tip/The-new-virtualization-The-storage-and-network-hypervisorhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240161456/HP-adds-multi-tenant-private-cloud-networking-and-virtual-switchinghttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240161456/HP-adds-multi-tenant-private-cloud-networking-and-virtual-switchinghttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240161456/HP-adds-multi-tenant-private-cloud-networking-and-virtual-switchinghttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240161456/HP-adds-multi-tenant-private-cloud-networking-and-virtual-switchinghttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/tip/The-new-virtualization-The-storage-and-network-hypervisorhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/tip/The-new-virtualization-The-storage-and-network-hypervisorhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240174286/Resisting-network-virtualization-technology-is-like-keeping-Token-Ringhttp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/2240174286/Resisting-network-virtualization-technology-is-like-keeping-Token-Ring


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4NETWORKVIRTUALIZATION nTIP 2: CONSIDER YOUR MONITORING TOOLSAND YOUR MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

Traditional monitoring tools and managementframeworks have struggled to keep up with the

adoption of server virtualization. Network vir-

tualization only adds to these challenges. Now

is an excellent time to reevaluate your moni-

toring tools and management framework. Using

virtualization as a catalyst, consider how you

can create an integrated single-pane-of-glass

view of servers and virtualized network infra-

structure that can and will be sharing physical

host resources with other workloads, moving

from place to place, or spread across internal

data centers and public or private clouds.

nTIP 3: EMBRACE OPEN STANDARDS

WHENEVER POSSIBLE

Cisco and VMware areclearly leading in the

market share battle for data center virtual-

ization, virtual switching and programmable

networks, and they will likely have significant

market positions in software-defined network-

ing(SDN). Both have vowed to support openstandards such as OpenFlowand OpenStack.

Yet their current products and roadmaps dont

necessarily enforce these standards. Enter-

prises should consider whether any purchase

decisions might lead them further down the

path of being locked into a proprietary solu-

tion. Both of these vendors are quick to point

out all the advanced features and capabilities

their proprietary products can deliver. Dont

take the bait. Opt instead for an open standards

approach that wont limit your options. As a

side benefit, embracing open standards should

simplify the transition of applications to or

from cloud environments.

nTIP 4: START EVALUATING AND PLANNING

FOR SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING

SDN is the next major trend in enterprise IT.

Embracing open standards should simplify the transitionof applications to or from cloud environments.
http://searchsdn.techtarget.com/definition/software-defined-networking-SDNhttp://searchsdn.techtarget.com/definition/software-defined-networking-SDNhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/OpenFlowhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/OpenStackhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/OpenStackhttp://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/OpenFlowhttp://searchsdn.techtarget.com/definition/software-defined-networking-SDNhttp://searchsdn.techtarget.com/definition/software-defined-networking-SDN


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4NETWORKVIRTUALIZATION The adoption of SDN will balloon over the nextthree years. SDN supports virtual networks, but

organizations are struggling to assess the rolesof SDN and other network virtualization tech-

niques in their current network roadmaps. Your

best approach is to try out both to see which

solution or combination of solutions is best

suited to your environment and would yield the

greatest cost savings and increased agility.

Enterprises that embrace virtual networks

and use them to push their overall adoption of

virtualization techniques will see the greatest

return on their investment. To ensure success,

however, IT may need to rethink both its tradi-tional organizational structure and enterprise

system management tooling capabilities. Orga-

nizations can further protect their virtualiza-

tion investments by embracing open standards

whenever possible. Finally, determine now how

software-defined networks can increase your

agility and reduce deployment challenges and

costs. Henry Svendblad
http://searchsdn.techtarget.com/news/2240179691/SDN-blog-roundup-OpenFlow-standards-flow-tables-and-SDN-skillshttp://searchsdn.techtarget.com/news/2240179691/SDN-blog-roundup-OpenFlow-standards-flow-tables-and-SDN-skills


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TOM NOLLE is president of CIMI Corporation, a strategic

consulting firm specializing in telecommunications and

data communications since 1982. He is also the publisher

of Netwatcher, a journal addressing advanced telecom-

munications strategy issues.

JOHN BURKE is principal research analyst with Nemertes

Research. With nearly two decades of technology ex-

perience, he has worked at all levels of IT, including

end-user support specialist, programmer, system admin-

istrator, database specialist, network administrator, net-

work architect and systems architect. He has worked atJohns Hopkins University, the College of St. Catherine

and the University of St. Thomas.

HENRY SVENDBLAD is a principal research analyst with

Nemertes Research, where he conducts both primary

benchmark research and custom research, advises vendor

and enterprise clients, writes thought-leadership reports

and delivers strategic seminars. A seasoned senior-level

IT executive, Henry leads research on advanced carrier

services, with an emphasis on emerging trends, vendor

management, business continuity/disaster recovery,

security and cloud strategies.

ABOUT

THE

AUTHORS

This Technical Guide on

Network Monitoring and Management is a

SearchNetworking.come-publication.

Kate Gerwig |Editorial Director

Kara Gattine |Senior Managing Editor

Rivka Gewirtz Little |Executive Editor

Shamus McGillicuddy |News Director

Chuck Moozakis |Site Editor

Rachel Shuster |Associate Managing Editor

Linda Koury |Director of Online Design

Neva Maniscalco |Graphic Designer

Doug Olender |Vice President/Group Publisher

[email protected]

TechTarget

275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466www.techtarget.com

2013 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or re-produced in any form or by any means without written permission from thepublisher. TechTarget reprints are available throughThe YGS Group.

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