1. Visualizing Network Health
How to Drive Visibility into Complex Infrastructures
Written by Dell Software
Introduction
Deep infrastructure visibility enables network administrators
and IT professionals to proactively manage (or overhaul)
data center resources to boost performance or productivity,
address network performance or availability issues, and provide
an optimal user experience. In fact, the Aberdeen Research
report “The Real Value of Network Visibility” found that network
performance projects “are becoming major components of
enterprise strategies for better customer service, profitability,
and revenue growth.”
Why has network performance become increasingly important?
The most important factor is that more and more business-
critical applications depend on the network. Trends such as
globalization, virtual workplaces and mobility are leading to
the extension of applications, data and unified communication
tools to a broader set of users across distributed locations.
However, as networks become more complex to support these
demands, real-time visibility becomes increasingly difficult.
Network administrators must now support heterogeneous
equipment, converged data, wireless access and mobility,
hybrid cloud environments, real-time applications, virtualized
data centers, next-generation devices, and more—and that
complexity makes deep visibility a bigger challenge.
This whitepaper arms network administrators and managed
service providers (MSPs) with insight into the trends that impact
network complexity, details about the capabilities required to
support visibility, and a quick look at Dell’s Foglight NMS, a
solution that delivers comprehensive network visibility and
actionable monitoring.

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As organizations
support office
locations around
the world, the ability
for IT professionals
to remotely
manage end user
applications or
machines becomes
increasingly
important.
Trends driving network
complexity today
Before we delve into best practices for
gaining network visibility, it’s important
to understand the characteristics of
networks today and the macro IT trends
that have added to their complexity.
Fluid networks
New technologies are constantly
emerging that promise to improve
speed and reduce costs, and the
needs of both users applications are
constantly evolving as well. Therefore,
today’s networks are increasingly
fluid, changing on demand to meet
application and service needs. A single
network today could have a blend of
physical and virtual servers or desktops
that support wireless and wired network
access for a wide range of devices from
smart phones to tablets, laptops and
desktops, all from different vendors
and all running on different operating
systems. Managing these complex
network device configurations using a
variety of different tools wastes time and
introduces more room for error.
Quick facts:
• According to an infographic by Lenovo and
Qualcomm, 147.2 million tablets will ship by
2015, with 45 million of those purchased
by businesses.
• IDC forecasts that more than 23 percent of
all servers shipped in 2014 will be actively
supporting virtual machine technology.
• Gartner reports that global spending on
public cloud services is expected to grow
to $110.3B through 2016.
• Ericsson, a leading mobile solution provider,
predicts that there will be 50 billion
connected devices by 2020 and expects
mobile data traffic to grow 10 times
by 2016.
• Diverse operating systems continue to be
used: Net Applications tracked usage data
from 40,000 websites and 160 million
unique visitors and found that access from
Windows 7 machines accounted for 44.48%
of monitored activity, Windows XP for
39.51% and Windows Vista for 5.25%. Mac
OS X 10.8 and Windows 8 rounded out the
top five with 2.44% and 2.26%, respectively.
Distributed workforce and globalization
Despite steps back from some large
companies, more and more employees
work outside the office. In fact, the
independent employment research firm
Telework Research Network reports
that in 2013, 20–30 million Americans
will work from home at least once a
week. Remote or teleworking is made
possible by network extensions and
the fact that applications, data and
unified communication tools are now
largely distributed. Countless business
applications support web access,
enabling employees to access data
anywhere, anytime.
Globalization is also changing how
data center resources are used. As
organizations support office locations
around the world, the ability for IT
professionals to remotely manage end
user applications or machines becomes
increasingly important. Network
administrators and MSPs who support
customers remotely should look for
solutions that enable remote access
(from across an office, city or country)
without distributing end-user activity.
BYOD and the consumerization of IT
Intelligent mobile devices in the
workplace are also placing significant
demands on networks. With the trend
toward “bring your own device” (BYOD),
employees now expect to use personal
devices as well as company-issued
devices for work, and they demand the
same anywhere, anytime network access
for their business applications as they
get on their personal devices. While
mobile devices and BYOD can improve
user satisfaction and productivity, these
trends introduce significant security
concerns and can cause bandwidth
bottlenecks. The network administrator
is forced to balance IT infrastructure
security with user demands while now
managing more devices.
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Data alone is not
enough to address
complex challenges;
IT professionals
need a solution
that enables them
to quickly identify
exceptions and
abnormalities
and that offers
trustworthy advice
and automation
workflow to resolve
problems quickly.
Cloud computing and
virtual environments
In many cases, company data is no longer
housed within a company’s four walls.
Instead it’s at data centers or in public,
private or hybrid cloud environments.
As cloud computing and converged
infrastructure reshape corporate
data centers, network complexity
increases and network administrators
must carefully monitor and manage
connectivity and WAN optimization.
VoIP and unified communications
Real-time data, social networks, video,
telepresence, VoIP, intelligent electronic
devices (such as RFID) and unified
communications are all raising the
bar for raw network throughput for
enterprises and service providers alike.
These applications, designed to foster
collaboration and user productivity, are
bandwidth hogs with high potential
to disrupt the performance of other
business-critical applications. As more
streaming applications are incorporated
into a network, IT professionals need
to carefully review network bandwidth
usage and requirements to ensure
uptime of all applications.
Choosing the right network
management solutions
Key capabilities for gaining
network visibility
The reality, then, is that today, networks
are increasing complex, fluid and
distributed, and they are being taxed by
an explosion of data. At the same time,
critical business systems, employee
productivity, communication and
customer-facing sites all rely on efficient
and stable network operation. Managing
today’s networks at a reasonable cost
requires simplifying the complexity
and giving network administrators
infrastructure-wide visibility to ensure
operational performance.
What capabilities are critical to attaining
the visibility required to manage network
infrastructure complexity? Let’s review a
few of the most important:
• Discovery and infrastructure topology
mapping—Dynamic discovery of all
equipment in the IT infrastructure enables
mapping of their current locations,
configurations and interdependencies.
The more types of devices the discovery
technology can detect, identify and
support, the better visibility the network
administrator will have.
• Real-time access across the infrastructure—
Network visibility is most effective when
it happens in real time; delayed or static
views of network components simply
do not provide network administrators
with the information they need to make
proactive adjustments to ensure network
availability and performance. Without
real-time visibility across the entire network
infrastructure, administrators can, at
best, correct issues after they occur and
implement new equipment. Only real-time
visibility can enable proactive analysis to
help administrators pinpoint the root cause
of intermittent, hard-to-find problems.
• Answers, not data—Actionable information
about network health, faults, bandwidth
hogs and performance issues reduces
mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR). There
are a lot of monitoring solutions on the
market, but data alone is not enough
to address complex challenges; IT
professionals need a solution that enables
them to quickly identify exceptions and
abnormalities and that offers trustworthy
advice and automation workflow to resolve
problems quickly.
Many remote management platforms are
available to manage servers, desktops
and laptops. Dell’s performance
monitoring solutions for network
management go much further, enabling
IT professionals to proactively resolve
problems before they impact client and
end-user satisfaction.
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In particular, Foglight Network
Management System (NMS) enables
you to easily discover, map and monitor
network components in disparate
locations across the globe. Its actionable
insights help you detect, diagnose and
resolve potential issues anywhere in the
stack, helping ensure your network’s
performance and availability.
Network discovery
Foglight NMS makes network discovery
simple. You begin by scanning a network
using the techniques you choose in
order to populate a database with the
devices you want to monitor, as shown
in Figure 1. The solution automatically
assigns devices based on the policies
you define, yielding the data you want
(and need) to see.
Network mapping
Once discovery is complete, Foglight
NMS creates easy-to-view network
topologies that deliver visibility into
your LAN or WAN (see Figure 2). These
diagrams are automatically updated
when devices are added or removed
from the network, so they provide a
quick view of the current status of your
Foglight Network
Management
System (NMS)
enables you to easily
discover, map and
monitor network
components in
disparate locations
across the globe.
Figure 1. Foglight NMS makes network discovery easy.
Figure 2. Foglight NMS provides easy-to-view network topologies—and automatically
updates them when devices are added or removed from the network.
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network, enabling you to check for
broken connections and determine the
location and details of the devices within
the network.
Dashboard setup and customization
The Foglight NMS dashboard provides
high-level overviews of network
performance, fault management and
device availability, as shown in Figure 3.
You can easily customize the dashboard
for visibility into critical device
information such as CPU load, network
interface traffic, latency and other key
performance indicators.
Network traffic monitoring and
real-time alerts
Foglight NMS gives network
administrators and MSPs visibility
into which users or applications are
generating traffic on the network and
how much network bandwidth they are
consuming (see Figure 4). You can drill
down into applications, conversations,
domains and endpoints to determine
how bandwidth usage impacts the
network as a whole. Foglight NMS not
only identifies potentially problematic
traffic spikes or bursts, but it also
provides alerts to notify you about
emerging issues in real time.
Syslog and event log monitoring
You can set Foglight NMS to receive,
log and display Syslog messages from
routers, switches and other Syslog-
enabled devices, so you’ll have the
complete information you need to
detect problems quickly.
The Foglight NMS
dashboard provides
high-level overviews
of network
performance, fault
management and
device availability.
Figure 3. The Foglight NMS dashboard provides high-level overviews of network
performance, fault management and device availability, and you can easily customize
it to meet your specific needs.
Figure 4. Foglight NMS provides visibility into which users or applications are generating
traffic on the network and how much network bandwidth they are consuming.
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Foglight NMS not
only identifies
potentially
problematic traffic
spikes or bursts,
but it also provides
alerts to notify you
about emerging
problems in
real time.
Conclusion
Networks today are complex and
constantly changing. Ensuring their
stability and performance is essential
to the delivering an optimal user
experience and ensuring the availability
of business-critical applications. To
effectively manage those networks,
administrators need complete network
visibility, from network discovery and
mapping to monitoring of network
traffic. Dell’s performance monitoring
solutions deliver those capabilities and
more, enabling network administrators
and MSPs to proactively manage their
networks and address emerging issues
to ensure high application performance
and user satisfaction.
To learn more
To learn more, or to download a free,
30-day, fully functional trial of Foglight
NMS, please visit quest.com/foglight-
network-management-system/.
You can also contact us by phone,
toll-free, at 1-800-360-9379,
option 9, ext. 17873, or by email
at nmsquestions@quest.com.
Figure 5. Foglight NMS provides Syslog and event log monitoring.
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Whitepaper-FoglightNMS-NetworkHealth-US-KS-2013-05-28
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