Cisco Cisco MGX-FRSM-HS2 B Serial Frame Service Module Libro blanco

Page 3 of 12

White Paper

Introduction

Today’s IT environments are built on the simple premise that business success relies on cost-effective application

and service delivery. An increasingly distributed workforce has introduced new challenges in IT environments, such

as remote branch management, data protection and compliance, and server installation and maintenance. IT

departments are consequently realizing the need to centralize applications in the data center. However, application

delivery over the WAN to remote sites brings with it the challenges of long latency, bandwidth bottleneck, and packet

loss. Cisco

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

accelerates applications over the WAN using optimization and compression technologies to provide LAN-like

application performance over the WAN. Since WAAS intercepts transactions between clients and servers over the

WAN, traditional performance monitoring solutions may be ineffective in such environments. Cisco

Network

Analysis Module (NAM) complements WAAS by providing robust performance monitoring and operational

manageability by using embedded WAAS instrumentation. Cisco NAM provides a rich set of analytics that identify

response times between servers and clients and offer advanced troubleshooting functionality including threshold-

based alerts and packet analysis.

Target Audience

This white paper is intended to provide an overview of the Cisco NAM’s capability for ongoing performance

monitoring and operational management for the Cisco WAAS solution for anyone whose job role involves

monitoring, managing, planning, and responding to network performance and quality issues in WAN-optimized

networks. Examples of job roles include network architects and engineers, IT architects and engineers, network

operators, and performance management and optimization personnel. This white paper complements the Using

NAM Reports with Cisco WAAS white paper available at

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps2706/white_paper_c11-

506458_ps2706_Products_White_Paper.html

Basic knowledge of Cisco WAAS and Cisco NAM is assumed. Please find more information on Cisco WAAS at

http://www.cisco.com/go/waas

and on Cisco NAM at

http://www.cisco.com/go/nam

Overview

The Cisco Network Analysis Module family of products improves visibility into network performance to help manage

and improve application delivery. Cisco NAM can help improve performance by identifying applications and services

that would benefit from Cisco control and optimization mechanisms. Operational efficiency of networks, servers, and

applications can be increased with the advanced troubleshooting and management capabilities provided by NAM.

Further, performance issues can be pre-empted with threshold-based alerts for more proactive performance

management.

Cisco NAM can use a number of data sources to provide performance management capabilities. For WAAS

deployments, NAM uses built-in instrumentation on WAAS Acceleration Engine (WAE) devices. The WAAS

instrumentation can provide information about the LAN and WAN interfaces of the WAAS products. Using the flow

information from WAAS, Cisco NAM offers a rich set of performance analytics such as response time and bandwidth

utilization. These performance metrics help in monitoring the impact of optimization on network resource utilization

as well as end-user quality of experience. Performance analytics can be collected from various points along the

server/client path, thus facilitating reporting on major segments as shown in Figure 1.