ca Opscenter

Case Study: How Cisco Gained Visibility into Network Utilization & Proactively Plan for Capacity Needs

OCT66SA #CAWorld

IT Engineer, Cisco Systems Inc.slinky9@cisco.com

Andrea Di Lecce

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Abstract

For most organizations, network capacity is limited and cost is often one of the top constraints. It’s no exception for a leader in providing innovative IT infrastructure solutions to the world. Like its customers in IT operations centers, it’s also required to deliver expected performance levels within its own infrastructure. Visibility into network utilization and being able to proactively plan for capacity demands is just as crucial. Learn how this global provider of IT infrastructure solutions optimizes bandwidth utilization, avoids unnecessary circuit upgrades, and proactively resolves bandwidth issues that could impact critical business activities. (See related sessions: Meet the Experts: Q&A for “Case Study: How Cisco Gained Visibility into Network Utilization & Proactively Plan for Capacity Needs".)

Cisco

Overview

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Cisco Global Network Size

68,000+employees

165+countries

550+ offices

How to intelligently control cost while delivering the best possible service.

= a whole lot of network capacity to monitor and manage!

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Why WAN Capacity Management?

Very few large companies perform WAN network capacity management

Many believe that “throwing money at the problem” by upgrading highly utilized circuits is sufficient

Cisco’s requirement

Optimize cost while delivering sufficient bandwidth to do business

Cisco’s goal

Take a proactive approach to network WAN capacity management and planning.

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Benefits of WAN Capacity Management

Traffic Optimization Free up existing bandwidth

Re-schedule non-time-sensitive traffic to after-hours

Remove non-business traffic having significant impact (bandwidth abusers)

Cost Avoidance Data-Driven Decisions

Avoid incurring costs for upgrades where bandwidth is extremely expensive

Only upgrade circuits that carry business-related traffic

WAN Capacity Management Strategy

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CA Technologies Products at Cisco

CA Network Flow Analysis

Collects hosts, conversations, protocols and ToS metrics from

WAN routers

Reports on circuit utilization

CA Performance Center

CA Infrastructure Management Data Aggregator

Metrics are displayed in one, easy to use interface

Collects circuit utilization and QoSqueue utilization from WAN routers

Gathers information using SNMP

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Data Gathering Strategy - WAN

CA Network Flow Analysis

WAN Circuit utilizationhost/conversation/protocol information for WAN sites,

backbone network circuits, ISP circuits

CA Performance Center

WAN circuit QoS queue utilization especially voice and video

WAN circuit errors and discards

CA Infrastructure Management Data Aggregator

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WAN Capacity Thresholds

Cisco’s “60/10” Rule

Circuit > 60% utilized More than 10% of the timeReports are run over a period of 1 monthData collected during local business hours

Allow for time to investigate & upgrade

95th Percentile PEAK Circuit is running >= 95%More than 5% of the time

Commonly used guideline

Data Center link utilization > 90%Voice QoS queue utilization > 90%

WAN Bandwidth Planning

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WAN Bandwidth Planning

Scope Calculate

MonitorUpgrade

Employee head count Video units requested

and installed at the site Call Center

considerations (Voice QoS)

Determine the appropriate size of WAN circuit(s) to a given site

Proactively monitor circuit capacity usage

Request upgrades when traffic remains chronically high

WAN Capacity Management Case Study

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Scenario

A strategic leadership meeting was scheduled, which involved Cisco

Telepresence video-conferencing at numerous sites around the globe.

All high-level executives were asked to attend this meeting virtually.

A CA PC dashboard was built to show all WAN sites involved in this

meeting.

After the dashboard was built, we saw…

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High Utilization

The WAN site in question had an OC-12 (622 Mbps) circuit.

Utilization was much higher than normal as we can see here!!

Dashboard View

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Top Protocol Identified

The top protocol (NetFlow info) was very clearly shown here.

Drilldown View

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Top Conversation Identified

This was the top conversation on the link in question

It was a test lab that was leaking copious amounts of data on the production network

We asked the lab owner to please stop the stream!

Further drilldown of top conversation (NetFlow)

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Scenario Resolution

Total time from detection to complete resolution

1 HOUR

Summary

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Summary

Cost AvoidanceBusiness aligned upgrades

Maximize existing bandwidth

Traffic OptimizationSolve problems proactively before users are impacted

Good Business SenseCA Technologies and Cisco Systems

CA Technologies tools are Cisco’s partners in monitoring, detecting and troubleshooting issues related to network capacity

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For More Information

To learn more about DevOps, please visit:

http://bit.ly/1wbjjqX

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DevOps

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