Cisco Systems 5 Integrating NAM with LMS, Understanding Traffic Patterns at the Network Layer

Chapter 6 NAM Traffic Analyzer 5.0 Usage Scenarios

Monitoring

Integrating NAM with LMS

The NAM Traffic Analyzer GUI can be placed on the LMS (LAN Management Suite) 4.0 dashboard and accessed thru the LMS GUI. See technical documentation for LMS on http://www.cisco.com.

Monitoring

Understanding Traffic Patterns at the Network Layer

The data gathered by the NAM 5.0 Traffic Analyzer is stored in a database, allowing you to examine the traffic trends for any application, host, conversation, and to analyze DSCP, RTP, voice signaling, and response time.

The values for average Application Response Times can be used to create thresholds, which will trigger alerts if those thresholds are exceeded, and you can also configure these alerts to trigger packet capture. This allows you to be proactive in identifying and troubleshooting issues in the network.

The Historical Analysis feature also allows you to see charts over time in the past, with which you can get a trending pattern for a host, critical application, or server that you're tracking. For example, using the Interactive Report window on the left, you can choose to see data for the past several days, or past several weeks. Based on that data, you can create Trigger thresholds for 20% higher. Once you have exceeded that threshold, you will get an alert, and the NAM triggers packet capture.

See Application Response Time, page 3-22.

See Alarm Actions, page 2-36.

See Thresholds, page 2-39.

Understanding Traffic patterns for DiffServ-Enabled Networks

You can analyze the traffic at Analyze > Traffic > DSCP, and use the Interactive Report window on the left to choose a particular DSCP group to focus on. After selecting it, you will see the charts populate.

See DSCP Groups, page 2-64.

Using NAM to Evaluate Application-Level Performance Monitoring for TCP-Interactive Applications

Application Performance Response Time Analysis provides up to 45 metrics. You can configure thresholds based on many of these metrics, and receive an alert when the thresholds are passed. Thresholds should be set for critical applications or servers using Average Server Response Time, or Average Transaction Time, or Average Network Time and Average Server Network Time. These thresholds will help identify where the problem lies in the application performance, and show whether the problem is a server or network issue. Depending on the alarm, you can access the NAM Traffic Analyzer to see the applications and clients accessing the server, or to check the devices in the traffic path monitoring device and interface utilization.

See Application Response Time, page 3-22.

See Thresholds, page 2-39.

User Guide for the Cisco Network Analysis Module (NAM) Traffic Analyzer, 5.0

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