Virtual Server Rx

JDSU Network Instruments- Virtual Server Rx

The ongoing push to increase server virtualization rates is driven by its many benefits for the data center and business. A reduction in data center footprint and maintenance, along with capital and operating cost reductions are key to many organizations’ operational strategy. The ability to dynamically adjust server workloads and service delivery to achieve optimal user experience is a huge plus for IT teams working in the virtualized data center – unless something goes wrong.

With network infrastructure, you can usually north/south track the root cause back to one location via careful instrumentation of the resources. Troubleshooting is then facilitated with any number of free and commercial-ware monitoring tools.

How can you get the same visibility you need to validate service health within the virtualized data center?

First Aid for the Virtual Environment

Network teams often act as “first responders” when application performance degrades. For this reason, it’s critical to maintain visibility into and around virtual constructs for effective troubleshooting and optimal service delivery. Otherwise, much of the value of server virtualization and consolidation efforts can be quickly offset by sub-par app performance. Fundamentally, achieving comprehensive visibility of a virtualized server environment requires an understanding of the health of the underlying resources.

Health Checks

Polling technologies such as SNMP, WSD, and WMI can provide performance insight by interrogating the host and various virtualized elements. A fully-integrated performance management platform can not only provide these views, but also display relevant operating metrics in a single, user-friendly dashboard.

Virtual servers are often highly provisioned and operating at elevated utilization levels. Assessing their underlying health and adding additional resources when necessary, is essential for peak performance.

Use performance monitoring tools to check:

  • CPU Utilization
  • Memory Usage
  • Individual VM Instance Status

Often, these metrics can point to the root cause of service issues that may otherwise manifest themselves indirectly.

For example, poor response time of an application hosted on a virtualized server may have nothing to do with the service or the network, but may instead be tied to excessively high CPU utilization. Without this monitoring perspective, troubleshooting will be more difficult and time consuming.

Further Diagnostics

Virtualization and consolidation offers significant upside for today’s dynamic data center model and in achieving optimal IT business service delivery. However, monitoring visibility must be maintained so potential application degradation issues can be detected and resolved before impacting the end user. To do so, care must be given in properly instrumenting virtualized server deployments and the supporting network infrastructure.

Ready for more? Download the free white paper 3 Steps to Server Virtualization Visibility, featuring troubleshooting diagrams, metrics, and detailed strategies to help diagnose what’s really going on in your virtual data centers. You’ll learn two methods to monitor VSwitch traffic, as well as how to further inspect perimeter and client conversations.

Download 3 Steps to Server Virtualization Visibility

Thanks to Network Instruments for the article. 

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Network Monitoring

NMSaaS The Advantages and Disadvantages of Network Monitoring

Implementing network monitoring for organization is not something new for large enterprise networks; but for small to medium sized businesses a comprehensive monitoring solution is often not inside their limited budgets.

Network monitoring involves a system that keeps track of the status of the various elements within a network; this can be something as simple as using ICMP (ping) traffic to verify that a device is responsive. However, the more comprehensive options offer a much deeper perspective on the network.

Such elements include:

  • Predictive Analysis
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Alarm Management
  • SLA Monitoring and Measurement
  • Configuration Management
  • NetFlow Analysis
  • Network Device and Back up

All of these element are key driving factors for any business. If you have read any of my previous blogs you will be aware of the three clear benefits of using a network monitoring system, these benefits include:

  1. Cost savings
  2. Speed
  3. Flexibility

However there a few small cons when looking at this topic.

Security

The security of any solution that requires public connectivity is of the utmost importance; using a cloud network monitoring solution requires a great amount of trust being placed in the cloud provider. If you trust your supplier there should be no reason to worry.

Connectivity

With network monitoring applications that are deployed in-house, the systems themselves typically sit at the most central part of an organization’s network.

With a cloud based solution, the connection to an external entity is not going to have such straightforward connectivity, and with this the risk of losing access to managed elements is a real possibility. However if your provider has an automatic back up device installed this is something which should not deter you away.

Performance

This interlinks with connectivity as the availability of bandwidth between an in-house system and managed elements vs the available bandwidth between an external cloud option and the managed elements can be significant.

If the number of elements that require management is large, it is best to find a cloud option that offers the deployment of an internal collector that sits inside the premises of the organization.

There are certainly a number of advantages that come with cloud offerings which make them very attractive, especially to smaller organizations; however it is important to analyze the whole picture before making a decision.

If you would like to find out more about this topic why not schedule a one on one technical discussion with or experienced technical engineers.

Telnet Networks- Contact us to schedule a live demo

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Top 3 Network Management Solutions to Consider in 2015

Top 3 Network Management Solutions to Consider in 2015

As networking becomes more complex, network management and monitoring has continued to evolve. In a world where technology is continually on the rise people must start becoming more aware of what capabilities are out there for the networks.

There are vast amount of network management solutions out there to help aid your business. The elusive goal of network monitoring tools is not only to alert administrators when there is trouble on the network but to develop trends in the health of the network.

The top 3 solutions to take into consideration in 2015 for all business are:

  1. Detailed Netflow.
  2. Network discovery.
  3. Fault & Event management.

Detailed Netflow

NetFlow is a feature that was introduced on Cisco routers that provides the ability to collect IP network traffic as it enters or exits an interface. By analyzing the data provided by NetFlow a network administrator can determine things such as the source and destination of traffic, class of service, and the causes of congestion. This is a crucial benefit for any organization as it allows them to stay on top of potential difficulties that may arise.

Network Discovery

This is an obvious one to consider for the new year because if you don’t know what you have how are you going to fix it? Network discovery has been around for a while now but not every organization implements it, this is something which should not be ignored.

Why choose network discovery:

  1. You can’t track down interconnected problems.
  2. You don’t know when something new comes on the network.
  3. You may be paying too much for maintenance.

Fault & Event Management

The fault and event management process is essential in a complex technological environment, and most companies have deployed a myriad of tools to collect millions of events, logs, and messages from their network devices, servers and applications.

The advantages of using it are as follows:

  1. Up-to-date knowledge of availability of all monitored network devices and interfaces.
  2. Fully automated Root Cause Analysis allows administrators to focus on actual point of failure and ignore collateral damage.
  3. Instant visibility of network alerts and problems as reported by devices and servers.

These are the top three network management solutions I think every business should take into consideration in 2015. NMSaaS can provide you with numerous amounts of network solutions all integrated into one package. To find out how we can help your business get in contact with one of experienced technical engineers.

Contact UsThanks to NMSaaS for the article. 

Network Device Backup Should Not Be Ignored In Business

NMSaaS Network Device Backup

Network device backup is vital for any business no matter what the size of the organization.

Network downtime due to device failure can be accounted for by hardware malfunction or inaccurate changes in the configuration of the device.

Regardless of the cause, you need to find the easiest and fastest way to get your network back up and running.

This means having an up-to-date network backup plan in place that enables you to quickly swap out the faulty device and restore the configuration from backup.

Too often, devices are set up in the network but forgotten soon after. Forgotten, that is, until there’s problem and until it’s too late! Many overlook the first step in network device management, which is to perform regular backups of the configuration.

If a business should experience a failure of any device on the network, without a backup of the configuration the IT staff will not be able to easily get the device working smoothly once again. The more complex or advanced the device in question, the greater the problem can be.

A third of businesses face a potentially serious problem maintaining network stability, because they fail to make copies of the settings of all devices on their network.

Techworld ran a survey and found that 33% of companies do not back up their network device configurations.

Maintaining regular and up to date backups is a vital piece of network management.

The reason why you should have a backup device configuration in place is as follows:

  1. Quick reestablishment of device configs.
  2. Reduced downtime due to failed devices.
  3. Disaster recovery and business continuity.
  4. Network compliance.

These are all key components to the success of your organization. If you would like to find out more about network device back up click below to receive your free whitepaper.

NMSaaS Top 10 Reasons to Consider a SaaS Based Solution

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Enterprises- Ensure Application Performance and Security Resilience

Ensure Application Performance and Security Resilience

For most every enterprise, the network is your business. Your network and applications are what connects you to your customers. Maintaining network vitality for an optimal user experience is key to business growth and profitability. But today’s networks are under tremendous pressures. User expectations for high performance and innovative applications are ever-increasing. So too are the frequency, magnitude, and sophistication of security attacks that your adversaries are launching to attempt to infiltrate your network, steal data, or disrupt operations.

To achieve a secure network that is resilient to attack requires the selection and deployment of security devices such as firewalls and intrusion prevention. To meet the expectation for application performance, devices such as load balancers, application controllers and performance monitoring tools are also deployed in the network. Ixia is focused on helping to ensure security resilience and application performance in your network.

Security Resilience

The demands on the network are constant and your security must have resilience to maintain its effectiveness as it comes under attack, is challenged to maintain visibility to traffic and events across the network, or just needs an operational change to deploy the latest threat updates. Ixia’s portfolio of security solutions allow enterprises to:

  • Optimize security device investments such as IPS, Firewall, NGFW or DDoS Mitigation by helping you select the best technology with the right performance and deploying it in the network most effectively with network visibility and optimal load balancing.
  • Minimize downtime and improve operational change control for security upgrades by validating security updates and changes and providing the inline deployment tools to ensure that these changes are not disruptive to network operations.
  • Train and prepare for realistic cyber security exercises with systems that can create the real-world application loads and attack traffic required for a cyber range and also provide the visibility required to stream high volumes of events to SOC tools to monitor the exercises.

Application Performance

It has become critical to assess applications and their performance not only before going live to ensure they are customer-ready, but that performance is maintained over time by monitoring the network — ensuring visibility into key application flows, anywhere on the network. Ixia’s portfolio of application performance solutions allow enterprises to:

  • Validate and assess application performance across your network with real-world application load testing and simulate applications for thousands of wireless or wired endpoints
  • Gain confidence for virtualization migrations by testing new deployments and removing any of the network visibility blind spots created by adoption of virtualization
  • Maintain application performance and ease of operation by getting the right information to the right application performance and network monitoring tools
  • Extend the life of IT tool investments and maximize the usefulness of the current tool capacity with the deployment of physical taps, virtual taps, bypass switches, and network packet brokers

Thanks to Ixia for the article. 

Top 3 Reasons to Choose a SaaS Network Management Application

NMSaaS Network Management

For small and medium sized organization deciding to use a SaaS based Network Management application they will have the ability to use better solutions that would have been too expensive for them to in the past.

Even the smallest business now has access to very advanced CRM, ERP, manufacturing and other software that would never have been available to them at their small scale.

In the world that NMSaaS plays in, this means mid-sized companies can now monitor and manage their IT systems with the same advanced software that was previously only available and affordable for large global enterprises.

The ability to gain these advantages without having to purchase expensive software is what makes cloud based network monitoring so appealing to mid-sized enterprises.

If an Enterprise decides to use a SaaS Network Management solution of any kind they’re going to see immediate benefits from three prime areas.

  1. Reduced costs
  2. Speed
  3. Flexibility

Reduced Cost

In the network monitoring space, many traditional Network Management applications require a hefty upfront fee for their software, and then an equally if not more expensive fee for professional services to actually make the system operate and integrate with other platforms. On the contrary, most cloud based systems are sold as yearly or less. SaaS models don’t need to pay for server hardware, storage or electricity associated with running a solution in house.

Speed

One of the biggest advantages of cloud based systems is that they are already running. The front end, backend and associated applications are already installed. As a user all you have to do is raise your hand and say you want it and in most cases your service can be provisioned in a matter of hours or less.

Flexibility

Cloud based system are generally much more flexible in terms of deployment, usage, terms, and even support compared to “legacy” software deployments! According to a survey by North Bridge Venture Partners, in conjunction with GigaOM Research “More than half of respondents cited business agility 54.5% as a main driver” of cloud migration. Clearly businesses are seeing flexibility as a major reason to move to the cloud and we do not see any end to this trend in sight.

In the end, all organizations are looking for ways to trim unnecessary costs and increase capabilities. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this today is to switch to cloud based SaaS applications where it makes sense.

NMSaaS- Top 10 Reasons to Consider a SaaS Based Solution

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Network Performance Monitoring

Ixia's Net Tool Optimizer

Visibility Into the Business

With virtualization, “Big Data,” and the sheer complexity of enterprise networks on the rise, dynamic network monitoring of performance and security provides a critical business advantage. Ixia’s network visibility solutions deliver ongoing insight into production networks to help maximize your company’s productivity and profitability, as well as its return on new and existing IT investments.

Leveraging state-of-the-art technology and techniques, Ixia’s powerful, high-performance network monitoring switches equip network engineers to meet the growing challenge of testing, assessing and monitoring complex, high-performance networks with limited access points. These solutions add intelligence between network access points and sophisticated monitoring tools to streamline the flow of data, ensuring that each tool receives the exact information it needs. Data from multiple TAP and SPAN ports is aggregated and multicast to performance and security monitoring tools, providing network operators with maximum visibility into both physical and virtual networks.

Ixia network visibility solutions:

  • Optimize traffic for monitoring with advanced filtering, aggregation, and replication
  • Extend investments in 1G monitoring tools to 10G and 40G deployments
  • Automate troubleshooting to reduce MTTR
  • Introduce “drag and drop” simplicity to streamline configuration and management
  • Expand network monitoring capacity enabling simultaneous monitoring of multiple connection points from a single port

Poor application performance leads to poor business performance: lost sales, missed opportunities, inefficient operations, and disgruntled customers, weakening the corporate brand. Mitigating this risk, Ixia’s network visibility solutions equip network engineers to leverage actionable insight—maximizing network and application performance while helping to optimize security, compliance, management, scalability, and ROI.

 

Ixia's Net Tool Optimizer Net Optics Network Taps

Net Tool Optimizers
Out-of-band traffic
aggregation, filtering,
dedup, load balancing

Net Optics Network Taps
Passive network access for
security and monitoring tools

 

Thanks to Ixia for the article. 

SNMP Management is a Crucial Factor to Consider in Business Today

NMSaas Top 10 Reasons to Consider a SaaS Based Solution

What is SNMP? Why should we use it? These are all common questions people ask when deciding if its the right feature for them, the answers to these questions are simple.SNMP Management

Simple Network Management Protocol is an “internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP netowrks”. Devices that typically support this solution include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks and more.

Key functions

  • Collects data about its local environment.
  • Stores and retrieves administration information as defined in the MIB.
  • Signals an event to the manager.
  • Acts as a proxy for some non–SNMP manageable network device.

It typicaly uses, one or more administrative computers, called managers, which have the task of monitoring or managing a group of hosts/devices on a computer network.

Each tool provides valuable insight to any network administrator who requires complete visibility into the network, and it acts as a primary component of a complete management solution information via SNMP to the manager.

The specific agents uncover data on the managed systems as variables. The protocol also permits active management tasks, such as modifying and applying a new configuration through remote modification of these variables.

Companies such as Paessler & Manage Engine have been providing customers with reliable SNMP for years, and its obvious why.

Why use it?

It delivers information in a common, non-proprietary manner, making it easy for an administrator to manage devices from different vendors using the same tools and interface.

Its power is in the fact that it is a standard: one SNMP-compliant management station can communicate with agents from multiple vendors, and do so simultaneously.

Another advantage of the application is in the type of data that can be acquired. For example, when using a protocol analyzer to monitor network traffic from a switch’s SPAN or mirror port, physical layer errors are invisible. This is because switches do not forward error packets to either the original destination port or to the analysis port.

However, the switch maintains a count of the discarded error frames and this counter can be retrieved via a simple network management protocol query.

Conclusion

When selecting a solution like this, choose a solution that delivers full network coverage for multi-vendor hardware networks including a console for the devices anywhere on your LAN or WAN.

If you want additional information download our free whitepaper below.

NMSaas Top 10 Reasons to Consider a SaaS Based Solution

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.

Ixia Brings Application and Threat Intelligence to Network Visibility

Ixia announced enhancements to its network visibility product portfolio, which extends the capabilities of its Visibility Architecture™. With the latest releases incorporating Ixia’s Application and Threat Intelligence, comprehensive solutions come together to meet the needs of enterprises for simplified and actionable network insight.

In an increasingly dynamic environment, network administrators are striving for complete network visibility. This level of awareness requires a robust visibility architecture that is able to apply context and correlation to network applications incorporating factors such as user location, granular application action, operating system, browser, and handset type across physical- and virtual-source traffic. The addition of these capabilities to Ixia’s Visibility Architecture marks a significant advancement in the tools that IT professionals can leverage to better understand the application performance and security implications of network events.

Updates to Ixia’s Visibility Architecture include:

  • Application filtering technology – Using Ixia’s ATI Processor, administrators are able to select precise geo-tagged application traffic for forwarding to specific monitoring tools. File transfers to suspicious locations or VoIP connections from a branch office with performance problems can be automatically highlighted and directed to the appropriate tools for immediate analysis.
  • New high-density platform – Ixia’s ATI Processor is available in the new NTO 6212 packet broker, which enhances Ixia’s NTO family with application brokering and NetFlow generation in an efficient 48-port 1U package.
  • Advanced packet processing and 100G support – Ixia’s NTO 7300 now supports 100Gb interfaces and 1.8Tb of advanced processing (such as header stripping and deduplication), the highest capacity and density in the industry by a substantial margin.
  • Monitoring of financial feeds – Ixia’s recent TradeView release allows for the monitoring of market data down to the channel level providing early warning of health issues with channel feeds that can save millions in revenue lost to trading errors.

Industry Commentary:

“As the number of data sources and customer expectations for always-on access continue to rise, its imperative that IT professionals have the right tools to keep networks running securely and at optimal performance,” said Jim Rapoza, Senior Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group. “To accomplish this, organizations must have visibility solutions that provide immediate insight into events in order to capture more accurate application and network data.”

“Application Intelligence is the next wave of network visibility, yielding deeper insight and faster resolution times,” said Scott Register, Senior Director, Product Management for Ixia. “Our recent advances demonstrate our commitment to providing our customers with the most advanced, efficient and comprehensive visibility solution in the industry.”

Thanks to Ixia for the article. 

Network Configuration Management is a Key Component in Business Today

NMSaaS Network Configuration Management

Network configuration management is the process of organizing and maintaining information about all the components of a computer network.

When a network needs repair, alteration, development or advancements, the administrator refers to the network configuration management database to determine the best course of action.

This database contains the locations and network addresses of all hardware devices, as well as information about the programs, versions and updates installed in network computers.

There are many advantages you have while implementing configuration management such as:

  • Minimizing configuration errors.
  • Minimizing downtime.
  • Optimizing network security.
  • Improving the processes of maintenance, repair, and expansion and upgrading.

Companies such as Cisco have been developing network configuration applications for years now and they feel it is a necessity and not an option in business today.

By using it, it allows you to roll out configuration changes to numerous network devices within minutes rather than hours, or even days. Push out a config change in real time or schedule it for after hours.

It makes you take advantage of the central repository for all network devices by automatically backing up your configurations. This automated approach allows you to sleep at night knowing that you can always have the most up to date configurations of your devices.

The web interface quickly gives you a user friendly snapshot of the status of your devices providing you the knowledge of what devices are backed up, not backed up, have start/run conflicts, etc.

One of the main leaders in the tech industry Infosim has come out with statement saying that

“Through 2015, 80% of outages impacting mission-critical services will be caused by people and process issues, and more than 40% of those outages will be caused by change, configuration, release integration and hand-off issues.”

This can all be easily avoided by using one of our configuration applications. To find out more get in contact with the team.

NMSaaS Network Configuration Management

Thanks to NMSaaS for the article.