The Top 5 Things You Should

Monitor on Your Network

Steve Goodman

DVP & GM, Network Management Group

Quest Software

Steve Goodman

DVP & GM, Network Management Group

Quest Software

• Background

– Founder, PacketTrap Networks (acquired Quest Software)

– VP at SonicWall (Ran a BU)

– VP at SkillSoft (IT infrastructure)

– IT Implementation Manager: Andersen Consulting (now

Accenture)

About ScriptLogic

What is Network Management?

Activities, methods,

procedures and tools

that relate to operating,

and maintaining

networks

Network Challenges

Gartner estimates the average cost of downtime for corporations to be as much as $42,000/hour

• Reduce downtime– Quickly identify

and fix issues

• Pinpoint chokepoints

• Identify bandwidth hogs– Applications

– Employees

• Manage multiple networks (wireless, remote)

Network Challenges II

• We Tend to Solve Symptoms Not Problems

• Correlating Negative Events

• Taking Proactive / Corrective Action

5 Things you Should Monitor

1. Application Performance

2. Virtual Infrastructure

3. Network Traffic

4. Distributed Resources/Locations

5. Critical Device Performance

You need a 360º View of Your Network

Application Performance

Applications provide the service

to end users

• Critical to employee productivity

– Exchange

– Salesforce.com

– SQL Server / Oracle

• First point of customer experience

– Website

– Online services

Virtual Infrastructure

More businesses are going

virtual to save money

• Reasons

– Consolidate hardware

– Simplify IT closet/data center

– Energy efficient

• Top Considerations

– VM performance

– VM manageability or “Sprawl”

– VM status & utilization

Network Traffic

How is your network being used?

• Biggest challenges

– Bottlenecks

– Rogue apps

– Security breaches

– Internet utilization

• You should be able to identify:

– Type of traffic

VOIP, Video, Audio, Rich Media

– Source

– Destination

– Impact

Distributed Resources/Locations

• Examples

– Multiple locations

– Private Cloud

– Mobile assets like laptops

– Remote employees

• Top Considerations

– Understand the links between users and

applications

• Exchange, SharePoint, etc

– Manage & Monitor just like a local

resource

Critical Device Performance

Any device whose failure would

cause a service outage

Top Considerations

• Network Devices

– Bad config changes

– Interface errors

• Hardware overload

– CPU

– Memory

– Disk Space

Selecting a Network Management Solution

• Pricing

– Per device

– Per interface

• Ease-of-Use

– Installation

– Configuration

• Functionality

– Hardware support

– Network traffic

– Network Behavior Analysis

– Correlation Analysis

– Application monitoring

– Support for new technologies

– Minimizing false alerts