Introducing Observer Infrastructure

Maintaining device and route performance is key to ensuring the delivery of critical applications. Observer Infrastructure (OI) is a powerful network monitoring solution that provides the functionality and intelligence needed to ensure the network supports current and future business.

Use OI to transform infrastructure metrics into actionable information to use in problem prevention, optimizing performance, resource planning, and more.

OI includes:

• Device health monitoring (SNMP, WMI, and WSD)
• IP SLA active testing
• NBAR and WAAS data collection
• Server monitoring
• Event notification
• Automatic mapping and topology discovery

Observer Reporting Server Integration

Maintaining device and route performance is critical to ensuring application delivery. Use ORS to correlate infrastructure and device performance with application delivery.

• Easily assess impact of infrastructure performance on overall enterprise
• Report on new performance data sources (SNMP, WMI, WSD, WAAS, IP SLA, NBAR)
• Compare network-level views side-by-side with device-level views in reports
• Enhance planning capabilities by matching capacity trends with underlying device details

GigaStor Integration

OI works seamlessly with the GigaStor back-in-time analysis appliance to provide the ultimate in troubleshooting flexibility. Drill down to the packet level and use GigaStor to go back to the time the problem occurred to see exactly what happened, without having to recreate the issue.

WSD Application Visibility

Web Service Data (WSD) functions similarly to SNMP and WMI, obtaining performance statistics from an application. Using WSD, OI retrieves performance metrics from VMware ESX Server and Cisco WAAS Central Manager. From these metrics, network managers can obtain utilization and resource consumption metrics for virtual devices, or assess the impact of Cisco WAN optimization on performance.

Leverage IP SLA and NBAR

Cisco's IP Service Level Agreements (IP SLA) and Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR) provide network-wide views of application and service delivery and performance. Use these technologies to improve traffic visibility on the network without deploying a single network probe.

• Track performance between IP SLA-enabled devices and other remote devices
• Monitor common IP SLA operations (for example, UDP echo, IPv6 traffic, TCP connect time, DNS lookups, and HTTP get and response)
• Obtain detailed application metrics from Cisco routers and switches using NBAR
• Actively simulate VoIP calls between IP SLA-enabled devices

Tracking WAAS Metrics

OI can now track WAAS metrics to help overcome monitoring limitations created by WAN optimization, as well as identify the impact of Cisco WAN optimization on performance. Track server and network bottlenecks in a WAN-optimized environment.

Device Monitoring

OI leverages SNMP, WMI, and WSD metrics for collecting and reporting on device performance. OI also allows for user-configurable alarms and thresholds to notify if hardware or applications are up or down.

• Prioritize device problems based upon their impact on the business
• Monitor IP address, port, and resource availability
• Schedule weekly device inventories to track unauthorized or unknown hardware changes

Route and SLA Monitoring

Ensure route availability and consistency with OI. Upon installation, OI discovers routes and creates route maps. OI then uses this data to continually measure route performance and alert of route changes or route delay. Documenting these changing paths, known as route flapping, is essential for ensuring adequate response time and enforcing SLAs.

Dynamic Reporting

Customize, view, expand, and compare reports for in-depth analysis on routes, devices, and groups. Track statistics over time for use in network trending and analysis.

Report types include:

• Alarms
• Business group statistics
• Device events
• Response time
• Alarm log

OI can also keep track of and monitor changes in removable hard drives, installed software, and more. Run automatic inventories or take instant snapshots, and create alarms for specific WMI, SNMP, and WSD objects.

Event Notification

Be alerted when a device is unreachable or has poor response time. Choose alert mechanism, or set OI to launch a program or generate a trouble ticket.

Report types include:

• View alarms by business group and/or route
• Drill down for device status details
• Graph and compare alarm data over time

Active Discovery

OI allows views into what devices are connected to the network and how they are connected. Users can obtain graphical and table-based displays of a network, network segment, or remote locations on the WAN, which allows for intuitive monitoring of response time and performance of devices anywhere on the network.

Technical Specifications

OI is available as software license and an appliance to monitor 100 or 500 devices. OI Enterprise can function as a monitoring device or as a collector of information from remote sites. Choose OI Enterprise for virtually unlimited scalability and for reporting device level metrics to ORS. OI can be purchased as Windows-based software, or as one of the following appliances:

Power Consumption