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Comprehensive Network Performance Management (by Chuck Loebach & Fred Bennett)

Vendor Profile - ZettaView Systems manufactures performance management systems that provide a superior troubleshooting and capacity planning experience for network administrators. Originally developed in Europe, the ZettaView system has long been an innovator and leader in monitoring and performance management. Consisting of a 24x7 real-time Network Manager, Alarm Manager, Historical Report Generator, Protocol Analyzer and Report Scheduler, ZettaView is a full-service monitoring and performance management for any network configuration.

Chuck Loebach is the International sales representative for ZettaView Systems. Since earning his engineering degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Chuck has obtained a wide variety of experience in enterprise networking. As a sales and marketing professional, he has helped many IT departments attain their goals of increased efficiency and reduced slowdowns.

Fred Bennett is the CEO of Zettaview Systems. Fred has founded two successful network test equipment sales organizations. During the course of his 15+ years in the IT Test and Measurement industry, Fred has worked with networking environments ranging from large multinational corporations to single-site small businesses.

Overcoming Performance Issues and Other Obstacles in the Enterprise Environment

Overview

For the past 30 years information technology has steadily been increasing in importance in the corporate setting. Now the smallest network slowdown has repercussions felt company wide. Recent studies have shown that most financial and business transactions are conducted electronically. People depend upon efficient connections for vital revenue streams. Time, and now bytes, are money. And this trend shows no sign of slowing.

As a result of business’ increasing dependence on IT resources, diligent monitoring and maintenance of these resources are now instrumental in maintaining a successful enterprise. All successful companies require networks free from performance issues to continue and increase their sales channels. Many monitoring and performance management products have been introduced in recent years to meet the demanding needs of today’s network professionals. Ranging from simple post-analysis protocol analyzers to full 24x7 real-time systems with comprehensive reporting and full stream-to-disk packet capture capabilities, these solutions have sought to alleviate the performance issues that have plagued IT managers since the first corporate networking environment was created decades ago.

ZettaView @ Interop Vegas 2008

Vendor Profile - ZettaView Systems manufactures performance management systems that provide a superior troubleshooting and capacity planning experience for network administrators. Originally developed in Europe, the ZettaView system has long been an innovator and leader in monitoring and performance management. Consisting of a 24x7 real-time Network Manager, Alarm Manager, Historical Report Generator, Protocol Analyzer and Report Scheduler, ZettaView is a full-service monitoring and performance management for any network configuration.

Fred Bennett is the CEO of Zettaview Systems.

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Network Intruments @ Interop Vegas 2008

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Sam Wang is the Central Region Territory Manager for Network Instruments.

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What Will They TAX Next? (by Scott Turkow)

Author Profile - Scott Turkow has 8 years of experience in the Enterprise Software space, primarily in Operations and Sales Ops roles. Scott is the Senior Operations Manager at Integrien Corporation, the leading intelligent systems management company that enables the predictable operation of mission critical applications. Prior to Integrien, Scott was with the Resource Management Software Group of EMC, which focused on the development and sale of automated network management products. A tri-athlete in training, Scott tries to be outdoors when he’s unshackled from his computer.

What Will They TAX Next?

Is “The Man” sticking it to you again this year? More often then not, when it comes to taxes, we stick it to ourselves. Which reminds me, do I still have time to itemize the building of a fallout shelter as a preventive medicine deduction?

For years, many organizations have been over-investing in IT assets and then wondering where the biggest chunk of the budget goes? I’m an IT tax professional (Suze Orman has nothing on me), so here’s a free tax tip that falls into the “overlooked deduction” department – it’s the “labor tax”, silly. And not necessarily in terms of headcount, but the manual effort tied to tasks that can, and should, be automated.

IDC says Management and Administrative costs will grow by 10% a year through 2010[1]. The largest component (30%) of overall IT spend is labor. Of this, the vast majority (77%) is just keeping the lights on (system & network management, HW & SW support and maintenance). And just to be clear, human costs for “running technology” will continue to increase as a percentage of overall costs unless you take a new approach. But unlike your relationship with the IRS, you have a choice. You can opt to pay much less of your “lights on” taxes. The key to this particular reduction is automation - the only long term answer to reducing management costs.

So why automation?

Solera Networks @ Sharkfest 2008

Vendor Profile - Solera Networks develops and markets high performance storage appliances and storage and application software and hardware solutions for the emerging Network Management and Network Security Markets. Solera's flagship product, the DS Series, is a suite of network packet recorder appliances that far surpass the gigabit barrier. Acting as a large network buffer, the DS Series integrates seamlessly with existing network applications, providing network managers a complete and accurate picture of network activity and performance.

Paal Tveit is VP or Engineering at Solera Networks and has over 20 years of software and hardware engineering experience. Prior to Solera Networks, Paal served as Director of Engineering at SonicWALL, where he was responsible for the design, implementation, and testing of FIPS and Common Criteria certifiable VPN's and firewalls across all product lines. He joined SonicWALL as part of the acquisition of Phobos in 2000. Paal previously held senior engineering positions at Mainstream Data, Philips/BTS, and Unisys. Paal holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

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Troubleshooting Hogs Bandwidth (by Steve Brown)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

Stephen Brown is the Product Marketing Manager for Network Instruments with nearly a decade of experience in network management and security. Steve is also the head geek in charge of their company blog, Network Observations. Steve likes to "get his geek on" anything network security related, VoIP stuff, and anything music and biking related (the kind that requires push power).

Between January and February 2008, we have communicated with 592 network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs scattered around North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. In addition to being geographically diverse, the population was also evenly distributed among different sized networks. This study was a follow-up of a similar exercise we performed a year ago and the goal is to gauge the changing attitudes and concerns of network professionals, to calculate the average time spent by an IT staff troubleshooting network problems, and to determine adoption rates of new technologies and topologies.

As a leading provider of innovative network analysis solutions, helping organizations and enterprises – including 70 of the Global Fortune 100 companies, it is obvious why Network Instruments would want to know what networking experts think. But we have learned that most of all, technologists also want to hear from other technologists. As Mike Barlow, coauthor of the book “Partnering With the CIO”, has said, “[CIOs] want to listen to other CIOs, not the VP of marketing … they want to hear from someone who's had the same experiences they have.”

What we have learned from this global survey is that despite the many new tools for monitoring and optimizing application performance, almost 75 percent of network professionals continue to cite “identifying the source of a problem” as their primary troubleshooting concern, marking a 25 percent increase from 2007. Performance problems are also on the rise with over two-thirds of respondents spending at least 25 days per year determining the cause of these issues.

Our research indicates that network professionals faced the following challenges:

• Continued lack of troubleshooting information: 31 percent cited this as their major network concern
  
• Ensuring application delivery: 25 percent felt this was the greatest network challenge
  
• Application performance headaches: Over one-third cited bandwidth consumption issues as the chief offender, while 32 percent selected application latency and delay issues as the second most common
  
• Problems investigating intermittent errors: 32 percent felt their organization needed to improve its ability to troubleshoot sporadic performance errors
  
• Security and compliance problems: These issues continue to be a headache for three-quarters of respondents
  

Go Deep or Get No Sleep (by Tim O’Neill)

Editor Profile - Tim O’Neill is an independent technology consultant. He has over 30 years experience working in the WAN, Analog, ISDN, ATM and LAN test market. Tim has worked with companies like Navtel, Network General, Ganymede and ClearSight Networks and is now helping companies get lab recognition and technology verification. Tim is also the Chief Contributing Editor for LoveMyTool.com, a website designed to help network managers gain access to valuable information and real solution stories from other customers. Tim is a patent holding, published and degreed engineer, who has seen this technology grow from Teletype (current loop) data analysis to today’s 10 Gigabit LAN’s focused on business applications with heavy compliance demands. Tim can be reached at oldcommguy (at) bellsouth (dot) net.

One-Minute Videos courtsey of ConvergeDigest.com

Are you interested in Deep Packet Capture and Inspection, as every Network Manger should?

Then I have a site for you to visit to get and share great information, dPacket.org!

I recently had the pleasure and opportunity to meet with Kyle Rosenthal who is the co-Founder of a unique and very important information site, dPacket.org. This site was created to focus on the technologies and products related to Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) as well as Deep Packet Capture (DPC), both of which are very important for successful network management in today’s security and compliance intensive markets.

dPacket.org brings together many important resources to help in the thorough understanding of these demanding technologies as well as a blog/community for deeper exchange of information, ideas, success stories and much more.

The following review is a quick tutorial of DPI/DPC as well as an introduction into the valuable resources that dPacket.org provides which will help you increase your knowledge in this leading edge technology that is and will be a major part of the network future, your network future! Great reading….

Network Analysis, Going Retro (by William McClain)

Vendor Profile - Network Instruments provides in-depth network intelligence and continuous network availability through innovative analysis solutions. Enterprise network professionals depend on Network Instruments’ Observer product line for unparalleled network visibility to efficiently solve network problems and manage deployments. By combining a powerful management console with high-performance analysis appliances, Observer simplifies problem resolution and optimizes network and application performance. The company continues to lead the industry in ROI with its advanced Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture, which successfully integrates comprehensive analysis functionality across heterogeneous networks through a single monitoring interface. Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries.

William McClain is the Marketing Communications Specialist for Network Instruments.

Summary

While network complexity and bandwidth demands continue to increase, applications such as VoIP increase performance requirements. Now more than ever, network administrators require versatile monitoring and analysis tools to quickly troubleshoot business-critical operations and monitor security and compliance. In this environment, Retrospective Network Analysis (RNA) tools that let you go “back in time” to reconstruct a failure or attack can offer distinct advantages over analysis tools that only operate in real time.

What’s Luck got to do with it? (by Scott Turkow)

Author Profile - Scott Turkow has 8 years of experience in the Enterprise Software space, primarily in Operations and Sales Ops roles. Scott is the Senior Operations Manager at Integrien Corporation, the leading intelligent systems management company that enables the predictable operation of mission critical applications. Prior to Integrien, Scott was with the Resource Management Software Group of EMC, which focused on the development and sale of automated network management products. A tri-athlete in training, Scott tries to be outdoors when he’s unshackled from his computer.

Q: What’s Luck got to do with it?

A: For some, everything.

You’ve got a firewall, a disaster recovery plan, redundant hardware, change management, and trouble ticketing. And then there’s monitoring. Monitors for your network and app performance data – check. Monitors for your O/S and Server data – check. Monitors for Database metrics – check. Storage device metrics – check. Transaction response metrics – collected. In duplicate!

Your 1985-2007 IT Strategy was recently revamped from “If we collect more we’ll have a better chance of detecting problems” to a superior 2008 Strategy “If we collect more and collect it more often, no problem can sneak by us.”

You’ve done it; you’re the master of your IT cosmos! You can proudly don your “Best IT Manager Ever” t-shirt to the office on Monday. Truth is, you were going to wear it anyway, but better to wear it like you mean it. All is good in your world, when suddenly a system slowdown elevates to an outage in a matter of minutes and thousands of users are dead in the water. Feeling like an actor in a Southwest “Want to Get Away” commercial, you begin to ask yourself – what went wrong? With St. Patrick fresh in your mind (and Guinness not so fresh on your breath) you realize your luck simply ran out. Or for those of you who don’t believe in luck – your poor reasoning and wishful thinking caught up with you.

Hope Is Not Enough (by Scott Turkow)

Author Profile - Scott Turkow has 8 years of experience in the Enterprise Software space, primarily in Operations and Sales Ops roles. Scott is the Senior Operations Manager at Integrien Corporation, the leading intelligent systems management company that enables the predictable operation of mission critical applications. Prior to Integrien, Scott was with the Resource Management Software Group of EMC, which focused on the development and sale of automated network management products. A tri-athlete in training, Scott tries to be outdoors when he’s unshackled from his computer.

What would you do if your company’s most vital business service went down???

(A) Freak out, pull the fire alarm and run for the high hills.

(B) Calmly inform the executive team that it was a one-time event, an oddity – once in a lifetime occurrence that will never happen again because you and your team fixed it for good. And they needn’t worry about customer complaints due to service availability ever again.

(C) Confident in your ability to recruit superhuman IT professionals, the type that can map the human genome with little more than their brain, 2 hours, a pad and a pencil - you calculate the additional headcount you think you need to speed problem identification and resolution in the future.

(D) Pour more money into your current system-monitoring tool set. You assume the siloed tools that are not designed to prevent problems, the same tools that gave you hundreds of alarms to sort through to “help” identify the problem, are your best option to invest in for your company’s future of improving application performance and availability.

(E) Stop and think. You realize your IT environment is not a simple plug-and-play shop (although all users seem to think so). IT complexity continues to compound and you need to find a new approach to managing critical business services.

If you’re an avid reader of LoveMyTool, you probably (hopefully) answered E. If you selected another answer, please start blogging immediately. I’d love to read how it all works out. Natural disaster films are big in Hollywood, why can’t the tech industry contribute to our rubber-necking appetites. Or will it? And will you be looking away when that next app goes down?