Monitoring Network Performance and Events
This chapter monitors network performance and identifies unusual events. It includes the following sections.
Interfaces Sending or Receiving Traffic
To identify specific interfaces that are sending or receiving traffic, use the following features:
- DMF Top Filter interfaces
- Production interfaces
This information derives from the LLDP/CDP exchange between the production and DANZ Monitoring Fabric switches.
Anomalies
Use the following features to recognize unusual activity or events on the network.
- Comparing dashboards and visualization over time
- sFlow®* > Count sFlow vs Last Wk
- New Flows & New Hosts
- Utilization alerts
- Machine Learning
Identify any unusual activity by comparing the same dashboard over the past 1 hour to the same time last week's data. For example, the bar visualization of traffic over time shows changing ratios of internal to external traffic, which can highlight an abnormality.
The Count sFlow vs Last Wk visualization in the sFlow dashboard shows the number of unique flows being seen now compared to last week. This visualization indicates unusual network activity and will help pinpoint a Denial of Service (DOS) attack.
In a well-inventoried environment, use the New Flows & New Hosts report.
Configure utilization alerts associated with the following DMF port types:
- Filter
- Delivery
- Core
- Services
The other alerts available include the following.
- The percentage of outbound traffic exceeds the usual thresholds.
- New hosts appear on the network every 24 hours.
Perform Anomaly Detection in data over byte volume and characteristics over time using machine learning.
Application Data Management
Application Data Management (ADM) helps users govern and manage data in business applications like SAP ERP. To use Arista Analytics for ADM, perform the following steps:
- Pick a service IP address or block of IP addresses.
- Identify the main body of expected communication with adjacent application servers.
- Filter down to ports that need to be communicating.
- Expand the time horizon to characterize necessary communication completely.
- Save as CSV.
- Convert the CSV to ACL rules to enforce in the network.
WAN Link Optimization
To identify a WAN link or device that is approaching full utilization, complete the following steps:
Machine Learning
Arista Analytics uses machine learning for anomaly detection. The following jobs are available:
- Single-metric anomaly detection
- Multimetric anomaly detection
- Population
- Advanced
- Categorization
For every job, a job ID must be configured. To create a machine learning job:
- Select the time range
- Select the appropriate metric
- Enter details: job ID, description, custom URLs, and calendars to exclude planned outages from the job
Single-metric anomaly detection uses machine learning on only one metric or field.
Multimetric and so on, I couldn't find any whichanomaly detection uses machine learning on more than one metric field. The image below uses two metrics: over and running ml per L4 app.
Multimetric Anomaly Detection detects network activity that differs from the population of data points. Arista Networks recommends this analysis for high-cardinality data.
This job groups data points into categories and then finds anomalies between them.
*sFlow® is a registered trademark of Inmon Corp.