NetScout’s Innovative nGenius® AFMon

Integrated Performance Monitoring &

Forensic AnalysisIntroduction

www.NetScout.com

Agenda

Performance Management Challenges

nGenius AFMon Features and Benefits

Top Down Troubleshooting and Superior

Forensic analysis to Reduce MTTR

NetScout is a strategic vendor partner

Performance Management Challenges

Challenge:

– Intermittent problems wreak havoc

– Optimal performance of key applications

– Degradations, intermittent problems can be elusive

– To speed up problem resolution

Needs:

– Ability to automatically analyze traffic

– Continuously retain evidence to recreate a complex

incident

– Discover root cause without waiting for the event to recur

Presenting

Combines application level monitoring and analysis with

continuous packet capture for post event data mining

Architecture purpose built for high performance recording

and infrastructure monitoring

High capacity, highly available hardware platform

nGenius Application Fabric Monitor

An architecture and design to dramatically reduce MTTR and improve QoE

Targeted at applications requiring extreme availability and responsiveness– e.g. Revenue impacting business services

Designed for deployment in complex, next generation environments– Ultra high speed networks

– High performance servers

– Distributed and multi-tier applications

Benefits of nGenius AFMon

Reduce MTTR with:

– Rapid, Top-down Troubleshooting

– Superior Forensics Analysis

Visibility into how the network is used

– Complete Application monitoring and profiling

State of the Art Hardware appliance

– Scalable Recording and Data-mining Architecture

Reduced TCO with unified, integrated support for multiple

technologies

– Cost-effective

– Investment Protection

Company Confidential

More than alarm notification, it

contains a description of what

triggered the event for quicker

problem identification…

… And a URL to launch a

context-sensitive view in nGenius

… And detailed Alarm views and Power

Alarm Evidence at your fingertips

Context-sensitive integration with leading enterprise management

systems. Alarm messages contain problem description and a URL

to launch the exact views in nGenius relating to the problem

Company Confidential

Seamless navigation from flow to packet: Intuitively drill down to any

level of granularity with just a right-click – even to sub-second statistics or a

packet decode – to solve even the most complex or subtle problems

Seamless user experience for navigating from high-level

to detailed (packet-level) troubleshooting.

Tight integration of nGenius AFMon with nGenius

Performance Manager

Seamless drill-down from flows to packet-level data

– Users navigate from 1 minute to sub-second data

Single login

– Access AFMon data without a secondary login

Continuous capture driven off of CDM flow configuration

– Automatically collects packet level data from physical as well as

virtual interfaces

Top Down Approach to TroubleshootingLowers MTTR

Company Confidential

Faster MTTR with Superior Forensic Analysis

Company Confidential

Faster MTTR with Superior Forensic Analysis

Metadata for faster summary decodes, filtering, and post

capture displays

Decode engine runs on recording appliance

Reporting off loaded from the recording appliance

Quickly hone and refine your

data set using advanced

filtering and rules capabilities

Custom create rules library, identifying the precise

combination of addresses, ports, applications and

patterns to be identified, or use pre-defined Expert Rules

Superior Forensic Analysis

Expert Analysis– Expert Zoom and Data Mining

interface with multiple workspaces

– Broad support of over 1000 protocol decodes

– TCP Session Follow

– Bounce Diagrams

Intuitive, flexible GUI– Multi-user, Web-based console

– Eases search process

Incident Reports for collaborating and communicating with others

Highly Efficient ArchitectureScalable recording and analysis architecture

Deep Packet Capture Flow Monitoring

Netscout ApproachTraditional Approach

Efficient

On-board AnalysisInefficient

Client-based Analysis

NetScout Competitor

Highly Efficient ArchitectureScalable recording and analysis architecture

Case in Point: Solution Architecture Wins Business

Bank in North America has assets

approaching $300 Billion

2 trading floors – Chicago, New York,

& NJ disaster recovery

Pain Point: Needs continuous capture

and monitoring on trading floors

– Need both flow based monitoring and

trending for troubleshooting and

capacity planning Plus recording for

in-depth analysis because of the

value of the financial trades

– Current solution in Chicago not

working – network managers

constrained by time delays in viewing

packet trace files when pulling them

over the network.

With the nGenius AFMon,

they are able to perform top

down troubleshooting with

detailed analysis of

applications and

conversations. When

necessary for in-depth

troubleshooting the actual

packets are available for

event reconstruction and

forensic data mining without

adding load to the network.

Visibility into how the network is usedComplete Application monitoring and profiling with CDM Virtualization

Application identification - Common matrix for multimedia voice, video and data– Well known, complex, custom, URL based

– VoIP for RTP, SIP, MGCP, H.323, SCCP

– Industry specific i.e.: FIX protocol, IP Multicast and PACs

– Application discovery for TCP and UDP unknown

– No data reduction – all applications

QoE / Response time analysis

Proactive Alarms for thresholds, response times, time over threshold and microbursts

Virtual interface analysis for VLANs, VRFs, QoS, or sites

Post-capture filters by variety of metrics, not just by IP address, ie: CDM port #

Company Confidential

Application Discovery Visibility into Unknown Traffic

Identify Port-to-Port

conversations for

unknown applications

– Can be logged Historically

with 1-minute resolution

Reduced nGenius Solution TCO Unified, integrated support for multiple topologies

Can instrument where and how IT organization requires

– nGenius Probes, nGenius AFMons, nGenius Collectors

10 Gigabit Ethernet Support

– Available in nGenius Probes today

– Available in nGenius AFMons next quarter

MPLS support for both Remote Sites or VRFs

Virtual interface analysis for VLANs, DLCIs, PVCs, along

with associated QoS classes

State of the Art Hardware Appliance Optimized Performance - Highly Available

OS Reliability

– Security hardened Linux appliance

– Operating system is located on dual internal OS drives configured

separate from the main storage array

Redundant hot swappable power modules

RAID-5 with hot standby and hot swappable disks

– If one drive fails, standby automatically kicks in – if that drive fails,

RAID 5 kicks in

Dedicated disk controller port per disk

– Enables simultaneous write to all disks

Compatibilities

– nGenius Performed Manager 4.0 required

– CDM v4.0 Agent Firmware

Flexible, Cost-effective configurations

Multiple functions in a single box (not just a single

solution set)

– Superior hardware at competitive prices

– Feature rich solution set

0, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB configurations

Flexible port configurations

– 4 HDX/2 FDX ports and 8 HDX/4 FDX port configurations

SFP or 10/100/1000Base-T capture port configurations

Model # Description

4910/LS-3U nGenius AFMon, 4 SFP* configurable Gigabit, up to 2 TB storage

4910 nGenius AFMon, 4 SFP* configurable Gigabit, up to 4 TB storage

4910/HS nGenius AFMon, 4 SFP* configurable Gigabit, up to 8 TB storage

4916/LS-3U nGenius AFMon, 4-Port 10/100/1000Base-T, up to 2 TB storage

4916/HS nGenius AFMon, 4-Port 10/100/1000Base-T, up to 8 TB storage

4986/LS-3U nGenius AFMon, 8-Port 10/100/1000Base-T, up to 2 TB storage

4986/HS nGenius AFMon, 8-Port 10/100/1000Base-T, up to 8 TB storage

Flexible, cost-effective configurationsFlexible Configurations

*Requires one SX, LX or TX SFP transceiver per port (sold separately)

Case in Point: Troubleshooting employee remote

access problem

New England based insurance

company

Pain Point: Remote employees

having trouble accessing network

resources

– LDAP servers source of many

problems

– Intermittent issues were elusive

nGenius AFMon provided continuous

capture and recording for in-depth

troubleshooting forensics

Discovered two

LDAP servers had

their authentication

databases out of

sync and were

spending their cycles

trying to sync their

databases

Realizing value from monitoring & recording

Geographic location requires coverage– Trading Floors

The business service demands it– Application servers with customer order information

Key network management objectives dictate analysis– Mission Critical Links with crucial or high concentration of

conversations

– Locations with chronic, highly visible, difficult to resolve intermittent problems

Critical tasks or functions point to solution– Ensuring SLAs

Superior Company

Technology leader with a

clear vision

The most experienced team

in the industry

– Founded in 1984

– Over 360 employees

Growing, profitable

– $100M revenue run rate

– $95M in cash, no debt

World-wide distribution and

support

Reduced MTTR with Unified Solution– Integral part of enterprise-wide nGenius Solution

– Top down approach with data mining using CDM metrics

Lower TCO with Architecture Advantages– Better performance

– Larger capacity

– Highly available architecture

– Integrated CDM and reporting functionality

– All-around better value

NetScout is a strategic vendor partner– Technology leader

– Financial stability

Summary –nGenius AFMon is superior to the alternatives

Thank You

www.NetScout.com