Keys to Ensuring Network PerformanceIan Cummins

Vice President, EMEA, Network Instruments

About Network Instruments

Privately held Founded 1994 Focus on Network Performance

Management

20 offices worldwide 130 partners across

50 countries

Key Products Observer GigaStor

23% average annual growth for past ten years

Critical Challenges Virtualisation The Cloud Unified Communications Increased application responsibilities

Performance Management Keys Moving at data centre speeds Virtual visibility Monitoring through the cloud Preparing for the UC surge In-depth application awareness

Keys to Ensuring Network Performance

Critical Challenges

Virtualization

All companies are rapidly virtualising servers 55% of firms will have implemented by 12/09* Additional 29% planning budget for virtualization

Major changes New connected elements (VMs) New network elements (vSwitches, vNICs) New topological constructs

Challenges for IT managers Loss of visibility into:

Topology changes Within a hypervisor and VM-to-VM

Loss of control Unclear responsibilities New and unclear boundaries

Sources:: Forrester Research, EMA Inc

Source: 2010 Interop Las Vegas Network Instruments Poll

Chief Troubleshooting Challenges

The Cloud

Gartner's 2010 CIO survey identified cloud computing as the No. 2 strategic technology investment for CIOs globally

Major challenges Loss of visibility with most processes taking place on another

network Proving points of delay/failure: internal network, ISP, or cloud

vendor

IT operations need visibility into cloud environments Monitor performance and availability Enable metering and billing Integrate with enterprise management systems

Unified Communications

UC combination of e-mail, messaging, telepresence, VoIP, video According to Cisco:

By 2013, video (TV, VoD, Internet video, and P2P) will exceed 90% of global consumer IP traffic

Video communications traffic increase 10x 2008 to 2013

Preparing for the video conferencing bandwidth hog Single telepresence suite requires 5 Mbps dedicated bandwidth Low end requires 5-10x bandwidth of typical VoIP calls Delay or outage is a major issue

Bottom line for network managers UC does not represent major change vs existing applications Video requires added planning, policy, quality monitoring and

troubleshooting Monitor and set the boundaries

Increased Application Responsibilities

Trends 80% of application failures blamed on network problems, but networks

will be less than 20% of the root cause* User experience and business services hinge on application

performance Web enabled applications

Challenges Increased layers and platforms to monitor Easier for customer to “walk out of your shop” Rate of change will be constant

Source: Gartner. David Cappelli and Debra Curtis. 14 May 2009. 2008 Polling Results Show Data Center Network Managers Increasingly Being Tasked With Meeting Application Performance Goals.

Performance Management Requirements

Dropped packets = unresolved problems, especially in UC

Ensuring validation of new technologies requires Reliable 10 Gb capture Large volume of data storage Rapid search to locate root cause

“Same size needle, larger haystack”

Moving at Data Centre Speeds

Virtualized environments create black holes for ill prepared

Need visibility into VM-to-VM communication, even on same physical host Example: Multi-tiered applications

Cannot analyse with tools that cannot be virtualized

Ensure integrated visibility into physical and virtual environments

Virtualization

Tools used to manage cloud services are often similar to tools used to manage internal infrastructures

Verify ability to track and analyze conversations from user to end destination in the cloud

Need in-depth WAN/Internet performance monitoring metrics: SLA enforcement Tracking precedence Locating and proving source of the problem:

internal network, ISP, or cloud provider

The Cloud

Solutions need visibility to validate performance

UC-specific metrics Jitter, quality, precedence settings, etc…

View UC within context of overall network traffic

Separate Network and UC problems

Unified Communications

No brainer: It’s not the network, it’s the application

Need application-specific metrics and information

Integrate multiple monitoring perspectives Packets, NetFlow, SNMP, WMI, WAAS, NBAR

Automated expert analysis

Baselines and intelligent alarms

Complete packet capture for problem resolution

Increased Application Complexity

Complete Performance Platform

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