FEATURE: NETWORK MONITORING
This is where the value of the Riverbed
SteelCentral solution shines through.
Are there any problems with a
‘multi-tool’ approach? Do end-users
struggle to understand contrasting
sets of network monitoring data?
If you’re like most network managers,
you probably hear complaints about the
‘network being slow’ on a regular basis.
I always explain to customers that
the main reason we build networks, is
to deliver applications. And to really
understand application performance,
you need an end-to-end network view
that helps you manage performance
through the lens of the application.
This can’t be achieved by having a
fragmented approach with an array of
network monitoring tools.
Riverbed SteelCentral Network
Performance Monitoring (NPM)
eliminates these challenges and gives
you the ability to proactively monitor
and easily troubleshoot the root cause
of network and application issues
before your end users ever know there’s
a problem.
“If you’re like
most network
managers, you
probably hear
complaints
about the
‘network being
slow’ on a
regular basis.”
Would end-users be better off
utilising a single, integrated
approach to monitoring?
Finding performance related issues is
no different than looking for a needle in
a haystack. As a concept, infrastructure
and network monitoring tools should
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“The ever
increasing
complexity
has driven
organisations to
further extend
their portfolio
of monitoring
tools.”
make it easy to monitor, troubleshoot,
and analyse what’s happening across
your enterprise network environment.
But when organisations start having
many of them loosely integrated and
deployed; they lose the single source
of truth and face a deluge of details
leading to an even bigger ‘haystack’.
Riverbed SteelCentral provides end-to-
end visibility with actionable insights,
helping you quickly and proactively
resolve any network-based performance
issues on the spot via a bird’s eye view
with consolidated NPM dashboards.
How important is flexibility in a
single, integrated monitoring tool?
Today, network operations engineers
are expected to be application fluent.
They need a deeper understanding
of applications and what end users
are actually experiencing. So, when
applications are slow or fail, network
managers must go beyond simply
proving that the network is not at fault
and start looking at the problem from
the application perspective too.
Hence, when users complain about
application problems you should have
no trouble identifying what they are
experiencing and giving business
owners a good picture of the actual
application response time and how
that relates to the network. This can be
extremely complex if the tool you are
using doesn’t offer the flexibility and
customisation needed.
Riverbed SteelCentral NPM dashboards
include everything you need to know
from the highest level to the most
granular detail with one-click drilldown
for the root-cause and problem isolation
and deep application visibility. I
always tell our customers: “In Riverbed
SteelCentral; a simple right click is your
best friend.”
How will an effective network
monitoring system help CIOs explain
how the network is performing?
Application performance equals
business performance. CIOs today are
challenged to deliver greater application
performance with lower cost. How
does Network Monitoring fit into this
equation? An NPM tool should be
application aware and report on how
the network is impacting the delivery of
an application.
From Riverbed SteelCentral NPM’s
perspective, we offer CIOs and line
of business (LOB) managers service
dashboards that provide a quick
view into the end-to-end health of
a business service that is visually
represented by red-yellow-green health
status indicators.
In addition, the ability of Riverbed to
quickly distinguish server, network and
application problems grants CIOs the
insight which greatly increases their IT
staff’s productivity as less time is spent
on troubleshooting.
“Finding
performance
related issues
is no different
than looking
for a needle in a
haystack”.
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