PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Network Management: Accounting and Performance Strategies - Graphically Rich Book  Network Management: Accounting and Performance Strategiesby Benoit Claise - CCIE No. 2686; Ralf WolterPublisher: Cisco PressPub Date: June 20, 2007Print ISBN-10: 1-58705-198-2Print ISBN-13: 978-1-58705-198-2Pages: 672

Understanding the need for Performance Management

What is performance management?

Why do networks require performance management?

Which problems does performance management solutions solve?

What aspects make up performance monitoring (data collection, data analysis, reporting, billing, and so on)?

Defining performance management

ITU-T definition (M.3400 and X.700, Definitions of the OSI Network Management Responsibilities):

• Performance Management provides functions to evaluate and

report upon the behavior of telecommunication equipment and the effectiveness of the network or

network element. • Its role is to gather and analyze

statistical data for the purpose of monitoring and correcting the

behavior and effectiveness of the network, network elements, or other equipment and to aid in

planning, provisioning, maintenance and the

measurement of quality.

ITU-T definition (M.3400 and X.700, Definitions of the OSI Network Management Responsibilities):

statistical informationgather

logs of system state histories

maintain and

examine

system performance under natural and artificial conditions

determine

Performance management

includes functions to:

Perf

orm

an

ce

man

ag

em

en

t in

clu

des

fun

cti

on

s t

o:

system modes of operation for conducting performance management activities

alter

TMF definition:

The TMF defines performance and SLA management in the context of assurance.

The assurance process is responsible for the execution of proactive and reactive maintenance activities to ensure that services provided to customers are continuously available and to SLA or quality of service (QoS) performance levels.

It performs continuous resource status and performance monitoring to detect possible failures proactively, and it collects performance data and analyzes it to identify potential problems to resolve them without affecting the customer.

This process manages the SLAs and reports service performance to the customer.

TMF definition:

Related documents are • TMF 701, Performance Reporting

Concepts & Definitions; • TMF GB917, SLA Management

Handbook, which also refers to ITU M.3010; and

• the FAB model of the eTOM.

Figure 1-4. Performance Management Architecture

Figure 1-5. Network Management Building Blocks

Purposes of Performance

Various performance scenarios:

Baselin

ing

Serv

ice

Mon

itorin

g

Netw

ork

P

erfo

rman

ce

Mon

itorin

gD

evic

e

Perfo

rman

ce

Mon

itorin

g

Device Performance Monitoring

Network Element Performance Monitoring

System and Server Performance MonitoringLow-level service monitoring components: - System: hardware and operating system (OS) - Network card(s) - CPU: overall and per system process - Hard drive disks, disk clusters - Fan(s) - Power supply - Temperature - OS processes: check if running; restart if necessary - System uptimeHigh-level service monitoring components: - Application processes: check if running; restart if necessary - Server response time per application - Optional: Quality of service per application: monitor resources (memory, CPU,

network bandwidth) per CoS definition - Uptime per application

From a device perspective, we are mainly interested in device "health" data, such as overall throughput, per-(sub)interface utilization, response time, CPU load, memory consumption, errors, and so forth

Figure 1-23. Catalyst 6500 NAM ART Measurement

A practical approach is to measure the server performance with the Cisco IP SLA or Cisco NAM card for the Catalyst switch.

The NAM leverages the ART MIB and provides a useful set of performance statistics if located in the switch that connects to the server farm

Network Performance Monitoring:

Tran

smissio

n

effi

cien

cy

Jitter (d

ela

y

varia

tion

)

Netw

ork

dela

y

Netw

ork

th

rou

gh

pu

t/cap

acit

y

Packe

t loss

Utiliza

tion

(device

, n

etw

ork)

Netw

ork re

spon

se

time

Service Monitoring

From a service perspective, here are significant parameters to monitor:

Key Q

uality

In

dic

ato

rs (K

QI)

Jitter (d

ela

y

varia

tion

)M

ean

Op

inio

n

Score

(MO

S) in

th

e c

ase o

f voic

eK

ey

Perfo

rman

ce

Ind

icato

rs (K

PI)

Packet lo

ss

Serv

ice d

ela

y

Serv

ice

availa

bility

Service meaning— A generic definition by Merriam-Webster declares: "A facility supplying some public demand...." More specifically, related to IT, we define a service as a function providing network connectivity or network functionality, such as the Network File System, Network Information Service (NIS), Domain Name Server (DNS), DHCP, FTP, news, finger, NTP, and so on.

Service

— The definition of a certain level of quality (related to specific metrics) in the network with the objective of making the network more predictable and reliable.

Service level

—A contract between the service provider and the customer that describes the guaranteed performance level of the network or service. Another way of expressing it is "An SLA is the formalization of the quality of the service in a contract between the Customer and the Service Provider.“

Service level

agreement (SLA)

— The continuously running cycle of measuring traffic metrics, comparing those metrics to stated goals (such as for performance), and ensuring that the service level meets or exceeds the agreed-upon service levels

Service level

management

Table 1-8 provides some generic SLA examples.

Table 1-8. Generic SLAs

Class SLAs ApplicationPremium Availability: 99.98/99.998 percent

Latency: 50 ms maximumPacket delivery: 100 percentJitter: 2 ms maximum

Broadcast videoTraditional voice

Optimized Availability: 99.98/99.998 percent

Latency: 50 ms maximumPacket delivery: 100 percentJitter: 10 ms maximum

Compressed video

Voice over IPMixed applicationVirtual private network

Best effort Availability: 99.98 percent

Latency: 50 ms maximumPacket delivery: 99.95 percent

Internet data

Baselining

Baselining is the process of studying the network, collecting relevant information, storing it, and making the results available for later analysis.

A general baseline includes all areas of the network, such as a connectivity diagram, inventory details, device configurations, software versions, device utilization, link bandwidth, and so on.

Baselining tasks include the following:

device inventory information (physical as well as logical). This can be collected via SNMP or directly from the command-line interface (CLI)—for example, show version, show module, show run, show config all, and others.

Gather

statistics (device-, network-, and service-related) at regular intervals.

Gather

the physical and logical network, and create network maps.

Document

the protocols on your network, includingIdentify

Baselining tasks include the following:

the protocols on your network, including

Identify

- Ethernet, Token Ring, ATM- Routing (RIP, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, and so on)- Legacy voice encapsulated in IP (VoIP)- IP telephony- QoS (RSVP)- Multicast- MPLS/VPN- Frame Relay- DLSW

Baselining tasks include the following:

the applications on your network, including

Identify

- Web servers- Mainframe-based applications (IBM SNA)

- Peer-to-peer applications (Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, Gnutella, Skype and so on)

- Backup programs- Instant messaging

• statistics over time,• traffic flows.

Monitor & study

From a performance baselining perspective, we are primarily interested in performance-related subtasks

network device-specific details:Collect

- CPU utilization- Memory details (free system memory, amount of flash memory, RAM, etc.)

- Link utilization (ingress and egress traffic)

- Traffic per class of service- Dropped packets- Erroneous packets

From a performance baselining perspective, we are primarily interested in performance-related subtasks

server- and (optionally) client-related details:

Gather

- CPU utilization- Memory (main memory, virtual memory)- Disk space- Operation system process status- Service and application process status

Service related information :Gather

- Round-trip time- Packet loss (delay variation—jitter)- MOS (if applicable)

both performance monitoring and accounting management gather usage data used as input for various management applications.

Performance management is one example of a management area that

benefits from performance monitoring and accounting, but also actively modifies the network and its

behavior.

without performance monitoring you operate the

network blindfolded.

Without accounting, you can hardly identify the cause of

bottlenecks and outages identified by performance

management.

Figure 1-6. Complementary Solution

This is a generic term for any data collection tasks that are common between accounting

management and performance management.

The intersection between the two areas is typically

the network monitoring part.