Placing Cisco NAM in Your Network

5.Create the appropriate datasource groupings of NAMs and/or Switch/Routers to aggregate data from.

6.Use the Traffic Analysis features of Cisco PVM to identify or troubleshoot the problem.

Basic questions about the Problems to be addressed

To decide how to deploy Cisco PVM and Cisco NAM-1/NAM-2 in the network, first answer some questions that address the purpose and needs of the administrator and how Cisco PVM and the Cisco NAMs can provide an accurate analysis. This approach helps ensure the effective use of Cisco PVM and the Cisco NAMs that it depends on for traffic data and minimizes the actual cost of deployment.

The following questions help in deployment planning:

•Is there a specific application or response-time problem?

•Employing voice or data QoS delivery?

•Is the network monitoring for trending, capacity planning, or fault management?

•Are there acute problems? If so, what are they?

•Is the network experiencing some combination of these problems?

A clear understanding of the objectives of monitoring would help make appropriate deployment decisions and would aid in using the Cisco PVM to your best advantage.

Once you have answers to the questions the next step is to determine the optimal locations where you can place Cisco NAMs in your network to get the statistics

Following are suggestions addressing the questions mentioned:

•For addressing a specific application or response-time problem, place the NAM near the center where servers are located and also near the client either in access or distribution layer or on a branch router.

•To monitor QOS, follow one of the following. (1) If you have a configuration where the marking is retained end-end, place NAMs centrally and monitor the DSCP values. (2) If the marking are set to change at various layers, place NAMs in those layers.

•For trending and capacity planning, place NAMs at strategic locations in your network such as core/distribution layers, and data center/server farm levels. If you would like get capacity planning information on branch traffic, then place NAMs at the level as well.

•To troubleshoot a problem, it is necessary to have NAMs at a location very close to problems. Since you are aware of your network and most common areas of problems, you would be the best judge of this location. For example, one warehouse has a problem on its Miami branch where they see huge overload on their circuit between 3:30-4 on Fridays. Hence it is critical for them to have NAMs in their branch location to easily login and troubleshoot this problem from PVM.

Following is a list of recommendations on possible placement of Cisco NAMs in your network.

•Distribution Layer: Placing the Cisco NAMs at the distribution layer is highly recommended as this layer yields LAN aggregation that is perfect for providing a NAM with rich data such as application and host usage. One or more Cisco NAMs can be placed at this layer to take advantage of gathering data on applications, hosts, conversations, virtual LANs (VLANs), and VoIP.

•Server Farms: Place near server farms (Web, FTP, and Domain Name System [DNS], for example), data centers, or near IP telephony devices (Cisco CallManager), IP phones, and gateways where the Cisco NAM can see request-response exchanges between servers and clients and provide rich traffic analysis, including ART.

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