Cisco Cisco WAAS Network Analysis Module Virtual Blade 5.0 Data Sheet

 

 

Data Sheet 

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. 

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Cisco WAAS Network Analysis Module (NAM) 
Virtual Service Blade 4.2 

The network is the foundation for application delivery. Next-generation networks need to meet the 

growing challenge of effectively delivering applications and services in complex IT environments. Cisco

®

 

Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is a comprehensive WAN optimization solution that accelerates 

applications over the WAN, delivers video to the branch office, and provides local hosting of branch-office 

IT services. Cisco WAAS NAM Virtual Service Blade enhances the application performance management 

capabilities of the WAAS products. 

Cisco NAM Virtual Service Blade provides a rich set of functionality for the WAN optimization solution. Cisco NAM 

Virtual Service Blade has the ability to process performance data from a variety of data sources. For WAN 

optimization, the NAM Virtual Service Blade utilizes the WAAS Flow Agent as a data source. WAAS Flow Agent is an 

embedded part of the WAAS software, running on WAAS products, which provides information about packet streams 

of interest traversing through both LAN and WAN interfaces of WAAS products. Traffic of interest can include specific 

servers and types of transactions to be exported. NAM processes the data received from the Flow Agents and 

derives application performance analytics and reports as part of application performance functionality called 

Intelligent Application Performance (IAP). Cisco NAM Virtual Service Blade can use IAP to provide a pre- and post-

WAAS deployment application performance view. Customers can get valuable information in terms of WAN 

optimization achieved and help determine improvements in user experience.  

The software form factor of the Cisco NAM Virtual Service Blade helps ensure that there is no additional hardware 

footprint and complements existing NAM hardware that consists of Cisco Branch Router Series NAM, Cisco Catalyst

®

 

6500/Cisco 7600 Router series NAM and Cisco NAM appliances. The consistent functionality across all platforms 

helps customers to deploy a combination of these products depending upon network traffic loads in their network 

locations. Cisco NAM Virtual Service Blade can also provide for application performance management on data 

sources other than WAAS Flow Agent, including Cisco NetFlow and port-level statistics. Using multiple data sources 

for different network locations provides a holistic network-level view for customers through a single Traffic Analyzer 

GUI. 

The Cisco NAM Virtual Service Blade is targeted for small data center deployments and proof of concept 

(PoC)/predeployment rollouts. 

Cisco NAM Virtual Service Blade provides for integrated performance management capabilities on the WAAS 

appliances for small data centers by using WAAS Flow Agent from the data center as well as from remote sites. 

Small data centers can be typically characterized as network deployments of fewer than 4000 flows that have been 

optimized by the WAAS products. Figure 1 shows a typical deployment model for the NAM Virtual Service Blade.