Cisco Cisco Prime Network Analysis Module 5.1 for Nexus 1010 White Paper

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Network Visibility in the Data Center:

Best Practices for Staying Ahead

Additional new features help with a broader range of management and monitoring objectives adjacent

to and beyond the data center, such as awareness of Trustsec Secure Group Tags (for confirming

tag matches between user and server) and CAPWAP decode and analytics for monitoring and

troubleshooting mixed wired/wireless access. Further, RESTful XML APIs are a standard feature of

all NAM products, allowing integration with broader management suites/architectures and direct

participation in programmable networking and infrastructure initiatives such as SDN.

EMA Perspective

Today’s data centers are changing in deep, fundamental ways. In the face of the dynamic nature of

application and virtual component layers, one of the few steady and reliable viewpoints into health,

activity, and performance will come from using the network perspective. But while network monitoring

continues to offer strong/growing value, it must adapt to the new order and change to reflect evolving

technologies and operational organization demands.
Based on ongoing research with practitioners as well as dialogue with industry solution providers,

EMA recommends that networking professionals focus on four key areas to ensure that their network

monitoring tools can keep pace and continue to add value. Network monitoring solutions must

be scalable to accommodate increasing volumes of activity. They must be flexible and adaptable to

provide visibility into a constantly changing mix of applications and services across physical, virtual,

and cloud environments. They must directly facilitate rapid problem recognition/diagnosis/resolution.

And finally they must participate in a broader management ecosystem that empowers collaborative

communications across the operations organization.
Cisco’s NAM products, long a mainstay element in network managers’ kitbag of troubleshooting tools,

have evolved/progressed significantly beyond their heritage. Newly added features and capabilities,

including a 30G-rated data center switch blade and virtual form factors, have moved the NAM solution

into position to meet best practice needs for network monitoring in today’s dynamic data centers.

And while many of the most recent enhancements are specifically intended to increase the utility of

the NAM solution within the data center, the full line of NAM products, including the many already

deployed both inside and outside of the data center, will benefit from the new features and capabilities.

This means that both existing NAM shops as well as those looking at NAM for the first time will reap

the rewards of the solution improvements.