eHealth® Simplifies Performance Management across Diverse Networks

PRODUCT FAMILY BRIEF: EHEALTH

eHealth® Simplifies PerformanceManagement across Diverse Networks

CA Network & Voice Management

eHealth®

SPECTRUM®

eHealth® for Voice

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eHealth®

eHealth® E2E Console

eHealth® Live Health® Application

eHealth® Distributed eHealth®

eHealth® Traffic Accountant

eHealth® Business Service Console

eHealth® SPECTRUM® Integration

eHealth® Universal Workflow Integration Modules(HP OpenView, Micromuse Netcool, Cisco CIC)

eHealth® Universal Data Integration Modules (CiscoWAN Manager, Cisco IP Solution Center, Lucent,Nortel, Alcatel)

eHealth® Universal Wireless Data IntegrationModules (Nortel, Starent)

PRODUCT FAMILY BRIEF: EHEALTH 3

Overview

Management of today’s enterprisenetworks can be a very noisyaffair as various managementtools bury you in data. This datais in different formats, reports arenot correlated and your IT staffspends most of its time chasingfalse alarms instead of working on strategic initiatives.

eHealth unifies and automatesmanagement of multi-vendor,multi-technology networks withproactive, real-time analysis,distilling data from disparatesources into actionable information.

Benefits

eHealth proactively identifiestrends and deviations fromnormal activity on your network,reducing downtime and repairtimes with rapid problemidentification.

You can analyze network capacity,optimize resource utilization and perform predictive capacityplanning.

eHealth also helps you managenetwork performance acrossmultiple classes of service, anddocument compliance withinternal and external service level agreements (SLAs).

CA Advantage

eHealth integrates with other CAnetwork and voice managementproduct families and third-partyproducts to provide rapid problemidentification and resolution andproactive service assurance acrossmulti-vendor and multi-technologyinfrastructures, ensuring highavailability and performance.

eHealth is also a key componentof CA’s broader Enterprise ITManagement (EITM) initiative,which provides a service-orientedarchitecture for unifying andsimplifying the management ofyour entire IT environment.

eHealth® helps you reduce operational costs while improving serviceassurance across your multi-vendor, multi-platform network infrastructure.With the proactive management from eHealth, you can pinpoint areasof service degradation and fix problems before users are affected.

eHealth® Integrates and Automates Performance ManagementAcross Multi-vendor, Multi-technology NetworksBusiness in the Internet age is increasingly network-dependent, with applications that must bealways available and operating at acceptable performance levels for both internal and externalusers. The price of downtime is escalating, and studies indicate that network outages now costenterprises an average of $100,000 per hour.

This challenge is compounded by budgetary constraints that force IT departments to do more with less as they struggle to tame converged multi-vendor, multi-technology networkenvironments that add new dimensions of complexity. Using fragmented management toolsthat manage various systems and network elements in isolation, IT teams are buried inredundant and conflicting data and are assaulted by false alarms.

In fact, industry research reveals that if your IT operation is at all typical, your staff membersare spending about 80% of their time looking for the causes of network problems. You need torecapture this time with a proactive network performance management system that gives youa unified view and centralized control of your entire heterogeneous network infrastructure.

Integrated Automation Is the KeyThe eHealth product family integrates performance management across the most complexmulti-vendor and multi-technology networks, tying information from multiple sources togetherand presenting it in one single, personalized business view. Hard failures account for about half of network degradations and outages, and eHealth takes you beyond fault management to address the remaining half as well.

eHealth collects event data in a historical database and uses this store to perform trend analysisand detect problems before they impact users and business processes. You can spot developingbottlenecks in various network elements and links, and document the need for additionalcapacity. Conversely, you can identify underutilized assets and downsize or redeploy them.

eHealth includes granular service level management for defining different classes of serviceand assigning goals, core thresholds and other performance metrics to them. Service levelreports show the Quality of Service (QoS) achieved and police service provider compliancewith external SLAs.

Proactive Service Availability ManagementWhen your network monitoring and management tools are generating hundreds of alarmseach day, it is difficult to determine which problems are real and which are false. eHealthproactively watches and sends alerts about problem indicators in real time, enabling you totake corrective measures before service levels are affected. You can drill down to the source of the problem quickly.

eHealth also pre-processes performance alarms with its embedded intelligence, powerfulalgorithms and natural de-duplication capabilities. This effectively eliminates the noise causedby false or repetitive alarms and takes the guesswork out of prioritizing management efforts. Youget fewer, more intelligent alarms that have been refined by business and historical perspectives.

The proactive intelligence in eHealth is based on two key algorithms that are used tounderstand exceptions in a historical context.

4 PRODUCT FAMILY BRIEF: EHEALTH

TIME OVER THRESHOLD This algorithm compares the value of a variable at each poll to apredefined threshold and reports if the value has been “too wrong for too long.” Instead ofgenerating a trap each time the threshold is crossed, the software looks to the historical data to spot real, persistent problems.

DEVIATION FROM NORMAL This algorithm exploits eHealth’s ability to baseline the end-to-endperformance of your network infrastructure. Rather than comparing current performance to afixed threshold, the software uses historical data to establish what is normal for a specific dayand time, and then assesses whether the current behavior deviates from that norm.

Using these algorithms and applying out-of-the-box rules, eHealth can baseline your networkand begin detecting performance degradations within hours of installation. Ongoing serviceavailability testing helps to assure the availability and response time of your network circuits,router ports and critical network services.

Real-time monitoring tools with default profiles for detecting brownouts and service delays let you start monitoring your network without configuring complicated rules. You can elect to monitor your infrastructure at user-defined intervals on specified days, and to “un-monitor”specified devices, systems and applications if you want to focus on areas with higherprobabilities of failures.

LIVE STATUS DIAGRAMFIGURE A

Live Status highlights your businesstopology with current alarm status and is a navigation point to drill downinto real-time and historical reports.


A high-level diagram displays the current alarm status of key network elements, using liveanalysis of incoming data based on performance over time. Designed to serve as a singlecentral console for performance alarms, it is customizable and can display active alarms thatmap customers, services, technologies and regions.

LIVE EXCEPTIONS BROWSER This live interface has three interactive components — an eventchart, an organization view and an event table. The event chart at the top displays the numberof active alarms or exceptions over time, and the event table below it provides details on allevents for a selected group in the organization view.

LIVE TREND APPLICATION Using the live trend application, you can seamlessly launch real-timemonitoring of affected elements to view performance patterns. These patterns are based on arich historical database that gives a profound context to raw data.

Sophisticated End-to-End Performance ReportingSophisticated performance reporting is at the heart of the eHealth product family. eHealthcombines historical and real-time metrics with intelligent analysis to generate personalizedviews you can use to rapidly pinpoint and correct developing performance degradation beforeservice quality is jeopardized.

AT-A-GLANCE REPORTS Ad hoc At-a-Glance reports provide a comprehensive view of theavailability and performance of a particular element, displaying the key statistics over aspecified time interval. By automatically capturing performance data and presenting ituniformly, these reports can reduce the time spent troubleshooting significantly.

TOP N REPORTS A tabular Top N Report sorts the elements that meet some user-definedcriteria. For example, you can use it to find the best, worst, fastest, slowest or least-utilizedcircuits. Top N reports can be scheduled to run automatically at specified intervals and theyalso make a useful ad hoc tool.

TREND REPORTS eHealth generates Trend Reports that track the value of one or moreperformance variables over a period of time. Because of its flexibility, you can use a TrendReport to reveal traffic patterns over time as well as relationships between elements andbetween variables. Element and system components that you can track this way include CPUs, disks, LANs, WANs, processes and process sets, and user or system partitions.


TREND REPORT

CAPACITY PLANNING REPORTS Use eHealth capacity planning reports to analyze the behaviorof your network resources under varying conditions, and predict where and when you’ll need to add capacity.

• What-If Capacity Reports. Run what-if scenarios of possible future conditions to prepare for problems before they occur.

• Capacity Projection Reports. These reports forecast how the capacity requirements of aparticular variable — partition utilization, for example — will change in the future.

• Capacity Provisioning Reports. Use these reports to compare projected capacity valuesagainst an upgrade threshold, identify the elements predicted to exceed the threshold, and determine the number of days until an upgrade is required.

FIGURE B

Trend Reports provide valuableinformation for capacity planning. Ease of customization lets you viewexactly the information you need. In this report, the average daily CPUutilization is tracked for one week.


MYHEALTH REPORTS Displayed in the eHealth Web interface, MyHealth reports are tailored to meet the needs of individual users. They can include one or more customized reports on the elements and groups that are critical to a particular user’s job function.

HEALTH REPORTS These reports evaluate the health of a group of elements by comparingcurrent performance to historical performance over the course of a day, week or month. Thereport provides a list of situations to watch, and identifies errors, unusual utilization rates orvolume shifts that warrant investigation.

SERVICE LEVEL REPORTS These reports demonstrate overall QoS across different classes ofservice and document compliance with internal and external SLAs. You can adapt them to your specific business by defining service level goals, core thresholds and other performancemetrics. In addition to the business level report, there are views tailored for businessexecutives, IT managers and service customers.

TRAFFIC ANALYSIS REPORTS Traffic analysis capabilities let you monitor traffic across CiscoNetFlow routers and standard RMON2 probes. These reports show you who is saturatingparticular links and what protocols and applications they are using. You can view networkresource consumption by users, business units, regions or applications, and use thismechanism to allocate costs back to individual departments.

DISTRIBUTED REPORTING You can manage up to 1 million elements from a single view bydistributing eHealth applications across multiple systems, either in server clusters or inmultiple locations around the globe. The machines can be inside or outside the enterprisefirewall, and you can have multiple simultaneous operators.

Predictive Capacity PlanningUsing increments you define, eHealth collects vital information from your networkenvironment and stores it. Out-of-the-box and customized reports use this rich, historicaldatabase to help you analyze trends, determine whether critical resources are available and are over- or underutilized, and decide which capacity planning initiatives make sense.

RIGHT-SIZE YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE Capacity planning reports identify network traffic patterns,trends and areas of high resource utilization. You can make proactive and informed decisionsabout where to upgrade, downgrade or eliminate capacity. The result is a right-sized infrastructurethat delivers maximum performance at minimal cost.

“WHAT-IF” ANALYSIS AND REPORTING Use “what-if” analysis and reporting to understand theeffects of growth on available network resources. With the information you need to makecapital expenditures at precisely the right time, you can save money and get more out ofexisting resources.

Integrated Multi-vendor, Multi-technology ManagementThe eHealth E2E console acts as a central point for performance management so you canmeasure performance end-to-end over the entire infrastructure.

A wide range of network technologies is supported, including LANs, routers, switches, ATM,Frame Relay, end-to-end permanent virtual circuits, Remote Access Servers, cable, DSL, MPLS,IP VPN, VoIP, QoS and cellular wireless. Applications are included as managed elements andapplication availability is actively tested end-to-end. In addition, eHealth manages a broadarray of multi-vendor products.


The eHealth product family also includes integration modules linking eHealth applications with third-party management systems and tools so you can leverage and enhance existinginvestments while managing your network more effectively.

VPNs pose some significant management challenges to service providers, and one of theeHealth integration modules is designed to help with Cisco VPNs based on Multi-ProtocolLabel Switching (MPLS) or the IPsec protocol. Using integration with Cisco IP Solution Center,eHealth obtains configuration and performance information from Cisco VPNs. You can prioritizefixes, document adherence to SLAs, and report performance in VPN-oriented reports thatdistinguish between classes of service.

Toolbars added to third-party management consoles such as HP OpenView Network NodeManager and Micromuse Netcool/OMNIbus provide direct access to eHealth applications, so operators gain eHealth performance management capabilities without having to learn a new product. There is two-way communication between the two environments:

• Redundant alarms are reduced so operators can focus on problem resolution.

• Operators of the third-party applications gain an eHealth historical context for moreeffective troubleshooting.

• Equipped with eHealth capabilities, operators of the third-party applications can detectservice degradations before faults occur.

eHealth scales to meet the needs of service provider networks, and a number of integrationmodules address carrier-class switching environments. Collectively these modules supportequipment from Cisco, Lucent, Nortel and Alcatel and bring them into the eHealthmanagement domain:

• You get a powerful, integrated solution for managing carrier-class environments.

• eHealth retrieves utilization and configuration information from the switches.

• Reports automatically reflect configuration and service changes across large networks.

• Rules-based filtering enables efficient data collection.

• You can define data-import periods as you see fit.

CA IntegrationThe eHealth product family integrates smoothly with SPECTRUM, combining the best innetwork performance management with the best in network fault management to create a comprehensive solution for ensuring the high availability and responsiveness of criticalbusiness services. The combined capabilities include:

• Alarms generated by eHealth Live Health are presented in SPECTRUM’s OneClick interface.

• SPECTRUM provides context-sensitive launching from SPECTRUM alarms and topologyviews to eHealth reports.

• SPECTRUM global data collections are used to seed eHealth discovery.

• Administration is simplified by combining fault and performance management.


Some other CA products and solutions that the eHealth product family integratessynergistically with include:

• eHealth for Voice, which bring data networks, IP telephony and legacy voice under onemanagement umbrella.

• Unicenter® Network and Systems Management, which unifies and simplifies systemsmanagement to ensure service availability.

• Unicenter® Service Desk, a scalable, ITIL-compliant help desk solution for automating andcontrolling IT processes and providing audit trails.

• CA Database Management, which consolidates and streamlines management of multi-vendordatabase environments to ensure availability of critical business applications.

The eHealth Family of ProductsEHEALTH E2E CONSOLE The foundation component of the eHealth family of products, eHealthE2E Console collects and analyzes data from all areas of your business infrastructure anddelivers sophisticated performance reporting and predictive analysis. Available in Windowsand UNIX versions, the software integrates real-time performance management within thecontext of historical performance so you can quickly identify, detect and correct performancedegradation before end user service quality is jeopardized.

EHEALTH LIVE HEALTH APPLICATION Working in conjunction with the eHealth E2E Console,eHealth Live Health Application provides real-time performance management acrossapplications, systems and networks.

EHEALTH DISTRIBUTED EHEALTH Designed for geographically dispersed environments, eHealthDistributed eHealth is a highly scalable solution for distributing data collection, analysis andstorage across multiple machines residing inside and outside the enterprise firewall. Thesoftware delivers a seamless view of your entire enterprise to a single Web-based workstation.

EHEALTH TRAFFIC ACCOUNTANT eHealth Traffic Accountant provides a business-level view of network utilization and delivers automated reports on network resource consumption byusers, business units, regions or applications. The software imports and analyzes Netflow and RMON2 data, combining it with sophisticated grouping and sorting capabilities to createconcise, understandable reports revealing trends and usage patterns that can impact theperformance of your network.

EHEALTH BUSINESS SERVICE CONSOLE eHealth Business Service Console provides a real-time,high-level view of the availability and performance of your internal and customer-facingbusiness services. The Web-based tool runs on Solaris, HP/UX and Windows, offeringcustomized views tailored to individual job requirements.

EHEALTH SPECTRUM INTEGRATION With eHealth SPECTRUM Integration, you can combinebest-in-class fault management and best-in-class performance management into one unifiedmanagement solution for ensuring high availability and responsiveness of your critical businessservices. eHealth alarms are integrated into SPECTRUM and presented through the OneClickinterface. SPECTRUM global collections seed eHealth discovery, and there is context-sensitivelaunching from SPECTRUM alarms and topology views to eHealth reports.


EHEALTH UNIVERSAL WORKFLOW INTEGRATION MODULES (HP OPENVIEW, MICROMUSENETCOOL, CISCO CIC) These integration modules provide two-way communication betweenthe eHealth product family and third-party management platforms. Operators of these third-party products gain a historical perspective of network performance by accessing eHealth reports dynamically. They can also launch eHealth applications from a toolbar inside the third-party consoles to exploit eHealth troubleshooting capabilities without learning new applications.

EHEALTH UNIVERSAL DATA INTEGRATION MODULES (CISCO WAN MANAGER, CISCO IP SOLUTIONCENTER, LUCENT, NORTEL, ALCATEL) Designed for carrier-class environments, these integrationmodules enable eHealth to manage a variety of high-end voice and data switching equipmentfrom industry leaders. eHealth can collect performance, configuration, utilization and availabilitydata from these third-party platforms, correlate and analyze it, and generate reports withactionable information. Supported technologies include legacy voice as well as VoIP and data networking.

EHEALTH UNIVERSAL WIRELESS DATA INTEGRATION MODULES (NORTEL GGSN, STARENT PDSN)Designed for carrier-class wireless networks, these integration modules enable eHealth togather the statistics needed to manage these industry leading wireless voice and data gateways.eHealth can collect performance, configuration, utilization and availability data from theseplatforms, correlate and analyze it, and generate reports with actionable information.

eHealth® Improves Service Assurance while Optimizing ResourceUtilization and Managing Costs With eHealth proactive performance management, calls to the help desk no longer provideyour first warning of network degradations or failures. The typical IT department spends 80%of its resources troubleshooting problems that eHealth can pinpoint and resolve automaticallybefore they impact users and business processes. Consequently, you reduce or preventdegradations and downtime.

eHealth automatically captures performance data and displays it as uniform information you can act upon immediately. Fewer trouble tickets get generated, and the ones that do are a lot less likely to get escalated to higher-paid personnel. Rapid problem resolution is furtherenhanced with service-level management and QoS reports you can use to adjust prioritizationsacross service classes.

You can use the eHealth predictive capacity planning capabilities to “right-size” your networkinfrastructure, adding capacity before performance starts to degrade and eliminate any excesson underused links. Similarly, you can identify and focus on the devices with the greatest failurepotential, and fine-tune your network design with built-in redundancy where it is really needed.

Aided by the eHealth powerful automation capabilities, you can deliver dependable, around-the-clock services to employees and customers, and ultimately provide higher-value services.Such service assurance and application availability protects and enhances your company’sbrand integrity and gives your business a competitive advantage.



Equipped with rich and multi-dimensional reporting capabilities, eHealth can generate a widevariety of reports tailored for different audiences. You can make more efficient use of staffspecialties, and better understand and communicate how well the IT team is delivering serviceand preventing expensive outages. You also get the ammunition you need to make a case foradditional resources when capacity is running out.

Granular service-level management adds to the flexibility of eHealth, enabling you to design a highly adaptable infrastructure that can respond quickly to changing business needs. Thisflexibility also makes it easy to deploy new applications and to support rapid growth andmergers and acquisitions.

Exploiting the advanced automation and out-of-the-box value of eHealth, your IT team canfocus on fine-tuning, building new tools and other high-value activities instead of running down problems and putting out fires. With the increased staff efficiency and infrastructureoptimization, you reduce network latency and improve application performance while managinga larger environment and more users with the same or less people. eHealth enables you tosave money, time and people, lowering capital and operational expenditures.

CA AdvantageeHealth integrates with other CA Network & Voice Management and third-party products toprovide comprehensive, end-to-end management of diverse IT network environments. Rapidproblem identification and resolution and proactive service assurance ensure high availabilityand performance of heterogeneous infrastructures. Vendor-neutral and platform-independent,CA management products offer the widest support of system types and versions available, aswell as broad language support for global deployments.

CA Technology Services™ and our partners can help you assess your current IT situation,define your goals and implement solutions to gain measurable results. To keep your CAsolutions operating at peak performance, CA support delivers unparalleled technical andcustomer support worldwide, and we offer training and certification through CA Education.

Next StepsYou should consider eHealth if you’re finding that:

• You are experiencing too much costly service degradation and downtime.

• Your staff can’t identify and fix performance problems before users are affected.

• Managing different technologies and systems separately is too inefficient and error-prone.

The eHealth product family unifies and automates network performance management acrossmulti-vendor and multi-platform networks, improving service levels while managing costs.

To learn more about eHealth, and to see how CA software solutions enable organizations tounify and simplify IT management for better business results, visit ca.com/products.

PB05HLTH01E MP316020607

CA, one of the world’s largest information technology (IT)management software companies, unifies and simplifiescomplex IT management across the enterprise for greaterbusiness results. With our Enterprise IT Management vision,solutions and expertise, we help customers effectivelygovern, manage and secure IT.

Learn more about how CA can help you transform your business at ca.com

eHealth® Simplifies Performance Management across Diverse Networks

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