Cisco Cisco Tetration Analytics G1 Libro bianco

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Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform Uses Application Insight to Map Dependencies Accurately

ADM is difficult to achieve, it is not feasible to perform manually at scale, and automated tools today provide

incomplete results due to low-quality input data and poor classification (grouping) algorithms.

Cisco Tetration Analytics application insight introduces unsupervised machine learning and behavior analysis that

aims to solve all these problems.

To perform accurate ADM, a huge breadth of high-quality input data is critical to be able to make relevant

observations. To achieve this, the Cisco Tetration Analytics architecture was designed from the foundation to

capture high-quality data. The Cisco Tetration Analytics platform consists of next-generation Cisco

switches that

have flow capturing capabilities built in to the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), small-footprint OS-level

agents, and a next-generation analytics cluster that incorporates big data technology that can scale to billions of

recorded flows (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Cisco Tetration Analytics Architecture

To continue the ocean analogy, with this Cisco Tetration Analytics architecture, you can “analyze the ocean.”

Because data is exported to the Cisco Tetration Analytics cluster every 100 ms, the detail of the data is much finer.

Cisco Tetration Analytics is much less likely to miss so called mouse flows, which often are missed by NetFlow

collectors, with an export rate set to 60 seconds. Because the flow table is flushed so often, Cisco Tetration

Analytics sensors are unlikely to be overwhelmed and therefore unlikely to need to drop flow records because of

lack of available memory. This is a significant change in the architectural model: the flow-state tracking

responsibility is transferred from the sensor to the collector, allowing hardware engineers to design smaller, more

efficient, and more cost-

effective ASICs. (See the “For More Information” section of this document for more

information about the Cisco Tetration Analytics sensor architecture.)

Not only does Cisco Tetration Analytics allow you to analyze a huge amount of data at one time; it keeps a detailed

historical record without archiving or losing any resolution in the data. This look-back feature allows the system to

understand more than a single snapshot in time, and to show trends for an application. For example, many

businesses have applications that have a seasonality about them, with additional capacity or dependencies pulled

in dynamically at moments of extreme load or at the end of a fiscal quarter. Understanding this behavior is

important because the application may have hidden dependencies that are not visible during quiet periods. Without
this knowledge, traditional ADM tools may recommend policies that do not truly map an application’s full

requirements across its entire lifecycle.