Cisco Cisco Prime Virtual Network Analysis Module (vNAM) 6.1 White Paper

Cisco Performance Agent is a licensed feature of Cisco IOS Software, providing embedded 
instrumentation for application analytics. Based upon deep packet inspection capabilities of NBAR 
(Network Based Application Recognition), Performance Agent offers comprehensive application 
performance and network usage data to help network administrators accurately assess user experience 
and optimize the use of network resources. Cisco Performance Agent works with other Cisco IOS 
Software Application Visibility and Control features, such as Netflow, NBAR and QoS, as well as the 
Cisco Network Analysis Module (NAM or vNAM) and the WAAS or vWAAS. Once enabled, 
Performance Agent may be configured to export application performance analytics, traffic statistics, and 
WAN-optimization statistics, delivering combined metrics gathered from Netflow, NBAR and NAM 
monitoring if desired. The information may be delivered to third party management tools in a Netflow 
v9 format or presented to the Cisco Prime NAM or WAAS vCM consoles in GUI reporting fashion. 
Performance Agent is supported on the ASR1000, ISRG2 and CSR routers utilized in this systems 
release. More information on Performance Agent is available 

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The use of network analysis devices is another application visibility service readily available in the 
VMDC design. The Cisco Nexus 1000V NAM VSB is integrated with the Nexus 1100 Virtual Services 
Appliance to provide network and performance visibility into the Nexus 1000V switching deployment. 

In this release of VMDC we also introduce the vNAM, a new vAPP-based form-factor that leverages the 
Nexus 1000v for traffic redirection and visibility. Cisco vNAM is introduced with Cisco Prime NAM 
software release 6.0. This software release introduces several new features enhancing overall application 
and performance visibility, including enhanced classification capabilities leveraging the Nexus 1000v 
DVS, and support for VXLAN, LISP and OTV encapsulations. For VMDC VSA 1.0 , which utilizes 
VXLANs to scale segmentation within the compute layer of the infrastructure, the latter is key to making 
this type of "overlay" technology feasible from an operational perspective.

The NAM VSB and new vNAM use embedded instrumentation, such as NetFlow and Encapsulated 
Remote SPAN (ERSPAN) or SPAN on the Nexus 1000V switch as the data source for traffic analysis, 
application response time, interface statistics, and reporting. Alternatively, in VMDC VSA 1.0, the CSR 
vCE, as the Virtual Private Cloud boundary point provides another source for SPAN or ERSPAN of 
aggregated traffic statistics for network analysis.

For more information about NAM for Nexus 1100, follow this link:

For more information about vNAM, see the following link:

Wide Area Application Services or WAAS (WAAS) is another key component of Cisco's Application 
Visibility and Control suite of products, providing application-centric acceleration services over the 
wide area. For information on how WAAS was utilized in VMDC VSA 1.0, refer to 

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Cloud Service Assurance for VMDC (CLSA-VMDC), based on the Zenoss Cloud Service Assurance 
solution, is a service-impact model-based system for tenant-based service assurance. CLSA-VMDC 
supports consolidated VMDC infrastructure monitoring and simple, easily-deployed plug-ins for