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Monitoring solutions involves data storage and enterprise monitoring solutions involves huge volume of data ! NetFlow data exported from monitored devices can be used to generate detailed reports for real time traffic behavior, historic reports, application performance, link utilization and so on. The data stored by the NetFlow based tools is very valuable for comparison of links over time periods, trend analysis and making capacity planning decisions which all finally helps in cost cutting. You can find many more advantages of using NetFlow data and NetFlow Analyzer from here.

With solutions that provide critical information from huge volume of data, backup and up time of the solution is as primary as any reporting feature. This brings in the need for a proper data backup mechanism which can save the day in case of a product crash, database corruption or virus attacks. Data backup can be done either online, ie. without shutting down the product or offline, which is to backup the data after shut down of the data collecting engine.

Online data backup is most commonly preferred because it does not involve product shut down and thus no down time. But, when it comes to products that involves continuous collection, storage and reporting from huge volumes of data, every day or every week scans for incremental backup can strain the product performance, affect the stability and might also cause a data corruption. Backing up data to save data from loss during future crashes causing a database corruption. A vicious circle it is !
Here, a workaround solution would be to do a offline backup by through a maintenance shut down. When the backup involved huge volumes of data, the shut down and restore is not minutes or hours, but could be days. Because down time of a business critical monitoring system is unacceptable, the last method is not even considered as a solution by many administrators.

This is where a failover mechanism can help. A failover feature has many advantages and solves multiple problems. With failover:

1. You get to to continue the network monitoring and report generation even if the primary server goes down.

2. You can have the standby server, and thus the standby database, at a remote location or even your DR center ensuring a surefire way of data backup and recovery.

3. You get an incremental data backup mechanism without ever having to shutdown the product

For an argument, one may say failover means additional servers and resources which means increased cost. But, with increasing number of hard disk failures and the high cost of data retrieval with no guarantee, adding one more server is just a percentage of cost in the long run.

And then again, there is the argument that failover or data replication is not the same as a data backup. The intention of data backup is to have a source for data to be used when the product crashes or if part of the data is corrupted due to errors. But this is exactly what the failover through database replication is achieved in the Enterprise edition of NetFlow Analyzer. The data replicated to a secondary server acts as a source to be used if the primary server is down and also can be used if the data base in the primary server is corrupted.

The Enterprise edition of ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, about which we have discussed earlier, with its highly scalable architecture and features for distributed setup like timezone view and hierarchical device groups, is useful for large organizations with branched offices or for enterprises with a large number of devices to be monitored. The Enterprise edition provides failover feature which can be setup and configured within a matter of minutes. All you need is a server identical to your primary server with the same or higher volume of hard disk space to which data replication takes place.

The failover feature in Enterprise edition works in such a way that the secondary server is automatically enabled when the primary one goes down. When the primary server goes down, the collectors which are sending flows to the central server will automatically redirect to the secondary server which then becomes the primary server. With a hassle free switch over and data replication, failover is the perfect data backup mechanism one needs in an enterprise network. For all those techies, Part 2 and Part 3 of this blog will explain the architecture and setting up of failover in NetFlow Analyzer Enterprise edition.

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A network bandwidth monitoring tool catering to varied needs of the small, medium and large enterprises requires different architecture. Different strokes for different folks!

During many of the recent analyst briefings, I've found myself having to answer this one particular question, which was "you have two different editions - Professional and Enterprise, catering to two different markets, SMBs and large enterprises, respectively. Do you have separate architecture for the two editions or do you give the same architecture for both?"

And that question, as always, makes me real happy. Because the answer is the one that the analysts and the product evaluators want to hear. Here is the answer:

"We understand that different organizations require different solutions and the SIZE DOES MATTER. That is why we have two different architecture for the two editions. Large enterprises are usually branched out in various locations, have higher flow rates and their NetFlow data is exported through the cloud. In contrast, the small & medium businesses do not have many branch offices, have lesser interfaces to monitor and lesser flow rates. With such a huge difference in business requirements, it is obvious that a single solution cannot be suited for both. Hence, it is necessary for the NetFlow Analyzer to adapt to such a need, and adapt, we did!

Enterprise Edition was developed strictly for large enterprises and following are the list of Enterprise level special features:

Distributed architecture - Collectors at branch office and the Central server for unified central view
Highly scalable - up to 20, 000 interfaces can be monitored, with 100, 000 flows per second
HTTPS connection between the collectors and the central server
Failover- Seamless reporting
Localized Timezone - Ability to view the reports / graphs according to user timezone

All the feature of Enterprise edition can be viewed here.

Professional Edition, on the other hand, strictly caters to businesses monitoring less than 600 interfaces and do not have branch offices. The collectors and central server functionality are managed by the single server, due to lesser number of flows. All the features of professional edition can be viewed here.

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Cheers

Joe

http://twitter.com/josephjay

When small organizations grow into enterprises, they also grow their branches..Literally..Well, atleast as remote sites, branch offices and DR centers. With current scenario defining cost saving as a primary factor for growth, is it affordable to have IT staff at all the remote locations? Having IT staff form monitoring the traffic at DR centers and major branches is justified, but not at the sites having just a couple of switching and routing devices.

The best option that comes to the forefront is NetFlow. NetFlow technology has the ability to give highly granular reports and with almost all major vendors and a major series of devices supporting NetFlow or similar flow formats, there is no need to add additional hardware at extra cost which again leads to cost saving. All you need is a software that can collect the flow packets and generate the reports. Here again comes other questions. How can you collect flows from the devices in various branch offices spread globally? If you already have a NetFlow tool deployed, will it scale up to handle the thousands of interfaces and flow rate of 40,000 to 60,000 flows per second? Along with the need for monitoring remote locations with detailed reports, there are also needs for features that cater to specificities for branched networks like time zone based view. Can this be provided by the existing tool?

Now, even if your existing application can do all this, questions arise on the feasibility of sending a large volume of data over valuable Internet links. The priority is always to save the available Internet bandwidth for business critical applications. To make the monitoring easier, enterprises even try deploying different instances of the same tool at the branches. But this does not help. The job of logging to separate installations to check the status of multiples links, generating reports for each interfaces which then have to be consolidated and etc is a daunting task.

In such a scenario NetFlow Analyzer Enterprise edition with its distributed flow collector and central server is the best suitable solution. The Enterprise edition of NetFlow Analyzer has flow collectors which can be deployed at various branches or geographic locations. The devices at the branches or a site can send flows to the collectors. The collectors will then collect the flows, compress them and then send it over HTTPS (Yes! Security for valuable data) to the central server.

The central server is from where all the reporting and analysis takes place. The central server collects data from the collectors, process them and stores it to the database from where reports are generated. You get real time visibility into the usage statistics about various links from globally spread branches in a single console.

The distributed flow collection and reporting engine gives the Enterprise edition capability to monitor up to 20,000 interfaces and flow rate in the range of even 60,000 flows per second. This rules out scalability and performance related issues that might have other wise come up with a integrated application trying to handle a large number of interfaces and high flow rate. The features available in this edition are also exactly what a distributed setup needs.

Tree view for devices helps group devices based on their locations (or your preferred criteria) for easier selection by users. This way, users do not have to search through the complete list of devices to find the one for which bandwidth metrics are needed. Timezone based view lets the users see reports in the time zone the device is at rather than based on the time where the product is installed. Administrators can also create multiple user accounts, assign devices or IP Groups to them and also set what timezone the users view the reports in. Do visit here to view the complete list of features available in Enterprise edition.

You can also leave behind your worries about exported NetFlow packets using a large volume of the Internet bandwidth. The NetFlow data is compressed using Java technology before being send from the collector to the central server. This brings down the volume of the exported NetFlow data to less than 20% of the actual size and helps save your valuable Internet bandwidth for critical applications. Moreover, since data is send over HTTPS connection, the NetFlow data is secure and even the GUI of both the collector and central server have HTTPS enabled by default.

Now with the central console, reports from the branches and DR sites spread geographically are at hand. There is no more need to login into different installations and have reports generated from each one of them separately. You also have the option to select the interfaces displayed in the dashboard and so at a single glance the network team gets to see the status of highly utilized links or the status of critical links.

All enterprises preferred uninterrupted monitoring and reporting of critical links, applications or servers. But when the need comes to shut down the central server for maintenance or if the central server is down inadvertently, what can be done? The failover is the perfect feature for this. The data stored in the central server is replicated to a secondary central server and any time the primary server goes down, the secondary is automatically activated after a fixed time. Thus the fail over gives you a automatic backup and redundancy of data.

With all these features and its scalability, NetFlow Analyzer Enterprise edition is the best suitable solution for bandwidth monitoring and traffic analysis. Do download the Central server and Collector from here and start your 30 day evaluation with free technical support from our team.

Regards,
Don Thomas Jacob

Database backup - The Failover way - Part 1

Different strokes for different folks!

Centralized monitoring - Bringing distributed networks closer

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