Cisco Cisco Prime NAM 2320 Appliance White Paper

Page 5 

©2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com

5

The primary focus of the NAM solution is to provide direct application visibility, via deep network 

visibility, sustained monitoring, and performance analytics. This viewpoint and capability allows 

network and operations pros to understand how each application is performing over time, for each 

end user, in context of everything else that is going on across the shared infrastructure. For instance, a 

complex application may involve multiple executable components distributed across the data center, 

together with networked database and storage tiers, all ultimately accessed via a virtual desktop platform 

by mobile end users. The Cisco NAM can gather performance data from multiple source locations 

spanning such complex environments, so that the full context of each individual application ecosystem 

can be understood, while also recognizing that certain parts of the delivery infrastructure are being 

shared with other applications and used for other purposes.
Such context is essential when investigating performance issues, and for times when it is necessary, a 

number of major enhancements have been made to the Cisco NAM to facilitate faster troubleshooting 

and more efficient workflows. For instance, the technique for capturing packet sequences has been 

completely reworked, evolving from a condition-based trigger approach to instant snapshots via a 

constantly rolling buffer. Additionally, captures can be scheduled based on time or volume triggers, 

and the capture process can also raise an alarm automatically if conditions of concern are recognized 

and met.
A long list of console view and operator interface enhancements provide further efficiency improvements 

for accelerating incident recognition and analysis. For instance:

•  The overall design of views presented in the operator console is structured around client/server/

application/site data, rather than the traditional network monitoring approach of organizing 

around monitored network links (see Figure 2). This reflects application/service-orientation, 

speeding workflows that would otherwise have to start from an infrastructure-centric perspective. 

•  Site-to-site traffic views expose specific activity and traffic traveling between locations, NetFlow 

sources, subnets, VLANs, etc., exposing top applications, top talkers, and traffic trends.

•  Hovering a mouse pointer over response time data reveals server, network, and data-related 

contributions so problem sources can be easily assessed.

•  When drilling into details around a specific server for further information, all applications 

associated with that address are shown, so the full context of related/shared resource influences on 

performance become immediately apparent.