WAN Optimization, WAN Acceleration, and Application Delivery Take the Lead on
WAN Application Delivery
by Putting Performance First www.NetQoS.com IT organizations have spent billions of dollars implementing fault management tools and processes to maximize network availability. While availability management is critical, infrastructure reliability has improved to a point where 99.9% availability is not uncommon. At the same time, application performance issues are growing dramatically due to trends such as data center consolidation, an increase in voice and multimedia traffic, and growing numbers of remote users. Relying solely on the management of infrastructure availability and utilization is no longer enough to address these challenges, especially as network professionals are becoming increasingly responsible for application delivery across the network infrastructure. According to Aberdeen Group’s 2007 research report, The Real Value of Network Visibility, “Network performance projects are no longer cost centers; they are becoming the major components of enterprise strategies for better customer service, profitability, and revenue growth.” The Performance-First Imperative Network engineers and managers must take the lead on application delivery with a performance-first approach to managing their complex networks. By shifting the focus from fault management—which is largely under control—to performance-based management, network professionals can concentrate on how the network is affecting service delivery and make themselves more relevant to the business units they serve. “Performance is the thousand shades of gray between those red and green lights indicating whether devices are up or down. IT professionals must switch from an up/down model of network management to a performance-first model to quantify end user experience,” said Joel Trammell, CEO of Austin, Texas-based NetQoS, Inc., a provider of network performance management software and services to Global 4000 companies, service providers, and government organizations. The performance-first paradigm inverts the traditional device monitoring approach and begins with top-down visibility into application performance. This change in perspective is driven by the fundamental purpose of the network—to transport data from one end of the system to the other as rapidly as possible. The more efficiently data flows at the transport layer, the better the application performance. Application response time is the best measurement to use when deciding how to optimize the network, plan new infrastructure rollouts and upgrades, and identify the severity and pervasiveness of problems.
A performance-first approach starts with measuring end-to-end response times to get an overall view of performance. It then provides other key performance metrics as needed, including VoIP quality of experience, traffic flow analysis, device performance, and long-term packet capture.
Performance-first management starts with measuring application response times and drilling into other metrics as needed, including VoIP quality, traffic flow analysis, device performance, and long-term packet capture.
Application Response Time Monitoring: Understanding application response time baselines is the essential starting point for making strategic decisions about network performance and application delivery. The deconstruction of total end-user transaction time allows network professionals to tie enduser performance back to the IT infrastructure and analyze the behavior of networks, servers, and applications. For instance, application response time monitoring enables network professionals to decide where WAN optimization and application acceleration technologies are most needed and to measure their impact before and after deployment. VoIP Quality of Experience: With the introduction of VoIP applications on enterprise networks, a performance-first approach must include monitoring call quality and the impact of convergence across all application performance. Network-based call setup and call quality monitoring enables the network team to track the user quality of experience and isolate performance issues to speed troubleshooting. Network Traffic Analysis: With end-to-end performance metrics captured and the source of latency isolated, further analysis is much more focused. Traffic analysis enables network engineers to understand the composition of traffic on specific links where latency is higher than normal or expected. This approach yields the information needed to redirect or reprioritize application traffic and plan for capacity needs and infrastructure upgrades. In addition, visibility into new or anomalous traffic patterns pinpoints performance problems and identifies security risks.
Device Performance Management: Managing network infrastructure, devices, and services is also a critical component of the performance-first approach, for both short-term troubleshooting and long-term planning. If end-to-end performance monitoring traces the source of latency to an infrastructure component—a busy router or a server memory leak, for example—network professionals need device performance management capabilities to poll the device in question and find the root cause so that corrective action can be taken. Long-Term Packet Capture and Analysis When problems do occur, engineers need to view and analyze detailed, packet-level information before, during, and after the performance degrades. Once the packets are stored, the data can be analyzed for actionable information to solve problems quickly, without having to recreate the problem. A Single Dashboard for Performance-First Management Recognizing the absence of tools to support the performance-first management paradigm, NetQoS set out to fill the void. With top-down performance analysis spanning enterprise views of the end-user experience down to deep packet inspection, the NetQoS Performance Center provides global visibility into the core metrics needed to sustain and optimize application delivery. The NetQoS Performance Center, a central dashboard for complete performance management, offers best-in-class modules that scale to support the world’s largest and most complex networks and leverage industry-standard instrumentation without the use of desktop or server agents. Advantages of Performance-First Management Survey results from Aberdeen indicate that organizations taking a performance-centric approach achieve superior application and network performance and more cost-efficient operations than their peers. In fact, those organizations reported a 92 percent success rate in resolving issues with application performance before end-users were impacted, compared to a 40 percent success rate for all the others. Other important benefits of performance-first network management include the ability to: Deliver consistent application performance and measure it: Without real-time visibility into end user response times, traffic flows, and infrastructure health, it’s impossible to manage application performance proactively. Too often, IT managers have no way of knowing how well their organization or service provider is meeting its performance targets. This was the case for NetQoS customer National Instruments, a leading provider of computer-based measurement, automation, and embedded systems. National Instruments delivers applications to more than 4,500 employees in 40 countries via two main data centers and its global MPLS network. Prior to implementing NetQoS products, National
Instruments had followed the traditional network management approach of focusing on the availability of network devices. “Without NetQoS, we were flying blind,” said Sohail Bhamani, senior network engineer at National Instruments. “When we would deploy a new application or make some sweeping change to the network, we would have no idea what impact it had except for availability.” Faced with implementing a major Oracle upgrade worldwide, the network team knew that successful application delivery depended on their ability to measure network and application performance, not just availability. They turned to NetQoS for a comprehensive set of tools to manage performance. Bhamani states, “NetQoS Performance Center gives us the insight we need into application performance across our network and combines end-to-end response time and traffic flow reports that are easy to create and use.” Make more informed infrastructure investments: When infrastructure managers make uninformed upgrade decisions, the costs can be high. Often, the anticipated results don’t materialize, ROI is poor, and performance problems persist. London-based ICI Group, one of the world’s largest producers of specialty products and paints, deployed the NetQoS Performance Center to gain visibility into network traffic from 320 locations in 46 countries. “NetQoS Performance Center management reports give us centralized visibility into traffic patterns across our global locations,” said Hitesh Parmer, ICI Group’s global network technology manager. “This data enables us to justify bandwidth upgrades, reduce network costs by identifying under-utilized sites, troubleshoot issues faster, and analyze the impact of new application rollouts to prioritize traffic appropriately.” Work collaboratively and more effectively to reduce MTTR: Network managers need tools that give them both real-time and historical information to optimize the network infrastructure for application performance and work with peer groups to plan for changes. Better knowledge and collaboration mean the right technicians may be assigned immediately to address problems quickly. “The correlation of the end-to-end response time and traffic analysis data in a consolidated dashboard via the NetQoS Performance Center allows us to more effectively monitor issues and quickly resolve them,” said Philip Potloff, Executive Director of Infrastructure Operations for Edmunds.com, the premier online resource for automotive information based in Santa Monica, CA. “We are building custom dashboards for each of our IT groups, including network engineering, application operations, systems administration, and database administrators, to have their own views into the NetQoS Performance Center data.” Columbus, Ohio-based Belron US, a multi-faceted automotive glass and claims management service organization, deployed NetQoS to deliver optimal network and
application performance to more than 7000 employees and more than two million customers across 50 states. “We saw immediate value when we deployed NetQoS products about two years ago, especially in identifying the source of problems for faster and more accurate troubleshooting,” said Gary Lewis, Belron’s manager of data networking and security. “We continue to rely on the products to give us the data we need for troubleshooting, capacity planning, and maintaining application service levels.” Conclusion IT organizations can no longer manage networks in isolation from the applications they support. Today’s IT landscape requires a shift from a device-centric to a performancecentric focus. By measuring how networked applications perform under normal circumstances, understanding how performance is impacted by infrastructure and application changes, and isolating the sources of above-normal latency, IT organizations can ensure problems are resolved quickly, mitigate risk, and take measured steps to optimize application performance. NetQoS is the only company that delivers a comprehensive network performance management suite for applying the performance-first approach. NetQoS products are used to manage large enterprise, service provider, and government networks, including a majority of the world’s 100 largest companies. Representative customers include: AIG; Avnet; Barclays Global Investors; Bed, Bath, & Beyond; Chevron; Deutsche Telekom; NASA, Schlumberger; Turner Broadcasting Systems; and Verizon.