Cisco Cisco DWDM Transceiver Modules White Paper

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As new applications are deployed, the infrastructure resources need to be provisioned to enable the applications.

From a network perspective, various configuration tasks may need to be automated: provisioning of new VLANs,

VXLANs, Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) instances, and QoS policies; injection of new routes into the

network; etc. In ongoing deployments, network parameters may need to be changed to allow or restrict

communications between components of the application or to tune networks for performance, based on application

needs. Modification of routing parameters, addition and removal of access control lists (ACLs), modification of QoS

parameters, etc. may need to be accomplished in the network.

Network devices need to provide comprehensive automation capabilities and APIs to support the new configuration

change and operation model and to integrate with agile software development methodologies and tools that are

prevalent in such environments.

Monitoring and Advanced Analytics

Network administrators seek a holistic view of the way that the network is performing and the ways that users are

experiencing the delivery of applications and services. Comprehensive visibility empowers the network

administrator to:

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Optimize network resources by characterizing application performance and use of network resources

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Troubleshoot problems with quick access to critical network information across bare-metal, virtual, and

cloud environments

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Deliver consistent performance levels by assessing the impact of changes, such as server consolidation

and virtual machine migration, on network performance

Tools that enable these capabilities depend on the APIs and interfaces exposed by network devices to gather

information and identify events of interest and trends. They present information to the user in context-relevant

reports with:

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Comprehensive traffic statistics and application, voice, and video performance metrics

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Detailed troubleshooting with insightful packet captures, advanced filters, and error scanning

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Centralized management and reporting

Traditional monitoring and analytics tools could use only basic features of network devices such as SNMP, CLI,

syslogs, and remote monitoring (RMON) capabilities. Modern tools can provide more powerful monitoring and

analytics by using new capabilities such as REST APIs, Python scripting, and comprehensive APIs such as Cisco

NX-API. These APIs enable a variety of all-encompassing views of the network to be exposed to the administrator

and also role-based, context-sensitive views to end users (Figure 3). The APIs also allow the tools to, optionally,

modify certain network parameters automatically based on trends derived from the analytics: for example, migrate

traffic to a different route if a specific route is congested.