Visualizing Network Health How to Drive Visibility into Complex Infrastructures

Written by Dell Software

Introduction

Deep infrastructure visibility enables network administrators and IT professionals to proactively manage (or overhaul) data center resources to boost performance or productivity, address network performance or availability issues, and provide an optimal user experience. In fact, the Aberdeen Research report “The Real Value of Network Visibility” found that network performance projects “are becoming major components of enterprise strategies for better customer service, profitability, and revenue growth.”

Why has network performance become increasingly important? The most important factor is that more and more business-critical applications depend on the network. Trends such as globalization, virtual workplaces and mobility are leading to the extension of applications, data and unified communication tools to a broader set of users across distributed locations.

However, as networks become more complex to support these demands, real-time visibility becomes increasingly difficult. Network administrators must now support heterogeneous equipment, converged data, wireless access and mobility, hybrid cloud environments, real-time applications, virtualized data centers, next-generation devices, and more—and that complexity makes deep visibility a bigger challenge.

This whitepaper arms network administrators and managed service providers (MSPs) with insight into the trends that impact network complexity, details about the capabilities required to support visibility, and a quick look at Dell’s Foglight NMS, a solution that delivers comprehensive network visibility and actionable monitoring.

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As organizations support office locations around the world, the ability for IT professionals to remotely manage end user applications or machines becomes increasingly important.

Trends driving network complexity today

Before we delve into best practices for gaining network visibility, it’s important to understand the characteristics of networks today and the macro IT trends that have added to their complexity.

Fluid networksNew technologies are constantly emerging that promise to improve speed and reduce costs, and the needs of both users applications are constantly evolving as well. Therefore, today’s networks are increasingly fluid, changing on demand to meet application and service needs. A single network today could have a blend of physical and virtual servers or desktops that support wireless and wired network access for a wide range of devices from smart phones to tablets, laptops and desktops, all from different vendors and all running on different operating systems. Managing these complex network device configurations using a variety of different tools wastes time and introduces more room for error.

Quick facts: • According to an infographic by Lenovo and

Qualcomm, 147.2 million tablets will ship by

2015, with 45 million of those purchased

by businesses.

• IDC forecasts that more than 23 percent of

all servers shipped in 2014 will be actively

supporting virtual machine technology.

• Gartner reports that global spending on

public cloud services is expected to grow

to $110.3B through 2016.

• Ericsson, a leading mobile solution provider,

predicts that there will be 50 billion

connected devices by 2020 and expects

mobile data traffic to grow 10 times

by 2016.

• Diverse operating systems continue to be

used: Net Applications tracked usage data

from 40,000 websites and 160 million

unique visitors and found that access from

Windows 7 machines accounted for 44.48%

of monitored activity, Windows XP for

39.51% and Windows Vista for 5.25%. Mac

OS X 10.8 and Windows 8 rounded out the

top five with 2.44% and 2.26%, respectively.

Distributed workforce and globalization Despite steps back from some large companies, more and more employees work outside the office. In fact, the independent employment research firm Telework Research Network reports that in 2013, 20–30 million Americans will work from home at least once a week. Remote or teleworking is made possible by network extensions and the fact that applications, data and unified communication tools are now largely distributed. Countless business applications support web access, enabling employees to access data anywhere, anytime.

Globalization is also changing how data center resources are used. As organizations support office locations around the world, the ability for IT professionals to remotely manage end user applications or machines becomes increasingly important. Network administrators and MSPs who support customers remotely should look for solutions that enable remote access (from across an office, city or country) without distributing end-user activity.

BYOD and the consumerization of ITIntelligent mobile devices in the workplace are also placing significant demands on networks. With the trend toward “bring your own device” (BYOD), employees now expect to use personal devices as well as company-issued devices for work, and they demand the same anywhere, anytime network access for their business applications as they get on their personal devices. While mobile devices and BYOD can improve user satisfaction and productivity, these trends introduce significant security concerns and can cause bandwidth bottlenecks. The network administrator is forced to balance IT infrastructure security with user demands while now managing more devices.

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Data alone is not enough to address complex challenges; IT professionals need a solution that enables them to quickly identify exceptions and abnormalities and that offers trustworthy advice and automation workflow to resolve problems quickly.

Cloud computing and virtual environmentsIn many cases, company data is no longer housed within a company’s four walls. Instead it’s at data centers or in public, private or hybrid cloud environments. As cloud computing and converged infrastructure reshape corporate data centers, network complexity increases and network administrators must carefully monitor and manage connectivity and WAN optimization.

VoIP and unified communicationsReal-time data, social networks, video, telepresence, VoIP, intelligent electronic devices (such as RFID) and unified communications are all raising the bar for raw network throughput for enterprises and service providers alike. These applications, designed to foster collaboration and user productivity, are bandwidth hogs with high potential to disrupt the performance of other business-critical applications. As more streaming applications are incorporated into a network, IT professionals need to carefully review network bandwidth usage and requirements to ensure uptime of all applications.

Choosing the right network management solutions

Key capabilities for gaining network visibilityThe reality, then, is that today, networks are increasing complex, fluid and distributed, and they are being taxed by an explosion of data. At the same time, critical business systems, employee productivity, communication and customer-facing sites all rely on efficient and stable network operation. Managing today’s networks at a reasonable cost requires simplifying the complexity and giving network administrators infrastructure-wide visibility to ensure operational performance.

What capabilities are critical to attaining the visibility required to manage network infrastructure complexity? Let’s review a few of the most important:• Discovery and infrastructure topology

mapping—Dynamic discovery of all

equipment in the IT infrastructure enables

mapping of their current locations,

configurations and interdependencies.

The more types of devices the discovery

technology can detect, identify and

support, the better visibility the network

administrator will have.

• Real-time access across the infrastructure—

Network visibility is most effective when

it happens in real time; delayed or static

views of network components simply

do not provide network administrators

with the information they need to make

proactive adjustments to ensure network

availability and performance. Without

real-time visibility across the entire network

infrastructure, administrators can, at

best, correct issues after they occur and

implement new equipment. Only real-time

visibility can enable proactive analysis to

help administrators pinpoint the root cause

of intermittent, hard-to-find problems.

• Answers, not data—Actionable information

about network health, faults, bandwidth

hogs and performance issues reduces

mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR). There

are a lot of monitoring solutions on the

market, but data alone is not enough

to address complex challenges; IT

professionals need a solution that enables

them to quickly identify exceptions and

abnormalities and that offers trustworthy

advice and automation workflow to resolve

problems quickly.

Many remote management platforms are available to manage servers, desktops and laptops. Dell’s performance monitoring solutions for network management go much further, enabling IT professionals to proactively resolve problems before they impact client and end-user satisfaction.

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In particular, Foglight Network Management System (NMS) enables you to easily discover, map and monitor network components in disparate locations across the globe. Its actionable insights help you detect, diagnose and resolve potential issues anywhere in the stack, helping ensure your network’s performance and availability.

Network discovery Foglight NMS makes network discovery simple. You begin by scanning a network using the techniques you choose in order to populate a database with the

devices you want to monitor, as shown in Figure 1. The solution automatically assigns devices based on the policies you define, yielding the data you want (and need) to see.

Network mapping Once discovery is complete, Foglight NMS creates easy-to-view network topologies that deliver visibility into your LAN or WAN (see Figure 2). These diagrams are automatically updated when devices are added or removed from the network, so they provide a quick view of the current status of your

Foglight Network Management System (NMS) enables you to easily discover, map and monitor network components in disparate locations across the globe.

Figure 1. Foglight NMS makes network discovery easy.

Figure 2. Foglight NMS provides easy-to-view network topologies—and automatically updates them when devices are added or removed from the network.

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network, enabling you to check for broken connections and determine the location and details of the devices within the network.

Dashboard setup and customizationThe Foglight NMS dashboard provides high-level overviews of network performance, fault management and device availability, as shown in Figure 3. You can easily customize the dashboard for visibility into critical device information such as CPU load, network interface traffic, latency and other key performance indicators.

Network traffic monitoring and real-time alertsFoglight NMS gives network administrators and MSPs visibility

into which users or applications are generating traffic on the network and how much network bandwidth they are consuming (see Figure 4). You can drill down into applications, conversations, domains and endpoints to determine how bandwidth usage impacts the network as a whole. Foglight NMS not only identifies potentially problematic traffic spikes or bursts, but it also provides alerts to notify you about emerging issues in real time.

Syslog and event log monitoring You can set Foglight NMS to receive, log and display Syslog messages from routers, switches and other Syslog-enabled devices, so you’ll have the complete information you need to detect problems quickly.

The Foglight NMS dashboard provides high-level overviews of network performance, fault management and device availability.

Figure 3. The Foglight NMS dashboard provides high-level overviews of network performance, fault management and device availability, and you can easily customize it to meet your specific needs.

Figure 4. Foglight NMS provides visibility into which users or applications are generating traffic on the network and how much network bandwidth they are consuming.

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Foglight NMS not only identifies potentially problematic traffic spikes or bursts, but it also provides alerts to notify you about emerging problems in real time.

Conclusion

Networks today are complex and constantly changing. Ensuring their stability and performance is essential to the delivering an optimal user experience and ensuring the availability of business-critical applications. To effectively manage those networks, administrators need complete network visibility, from network discovery and mapping to monitoring of network traffic. Dell’s performance monitoring solutions deliver those capabilities and more, enabling network administrators and MSPs to proactively manage their networks and address emerging issues to ensure high application performance and user satisfaction.

To learn more

To learn more, or to download a free, 30-day, fully functional trial of Foglight NMS, please visit quest.com/foglight-network-management-system/.You can also contact us by phone, toll-free, at 1-800-360-9379, option 9, ext. 17873, or by email at nmsquestions@quest.com.

Figure 5. Foglight NMS provides Syslog and event log monitoring.

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