Ask the Expert:Creating Efficient Networks – Overview of Collection & Reporting tools

[ciscomoderator]

With Krishnakanth Gopi and Sherin Mohamadali

Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. Learn from Cisco experts Krishnakanth Kalapurakkal Gopi and Sherin Mohamadali how inventory and configuration information is collected from customer networks and is converted into service offerings including  PSIRT Reports, EOX Reports, Best Practices Configuration Analysis Reports, Field Notice Reports, Software Infrastructure Analysis and Audit Reports. This is a service which Cisco offers to worldwide  Enterprise, Service Provider & Public Sector customers.  Find out how to optimize your network and increase efficiency and robustness. Many companies around the globe are running  on the Cisco platform and make use of this offering. Take this opportunity to ask questions and learn how your company and network can benefit from this service too.  

Krishnakanth Gopi is a technical lead for Cisco Services Technology Group whose expertise is in Unix, networking, and NMS systems. He has been with Cisco for more than 7 years, giving service and support for various Cisco collection & reporting tools for the Asia Pacific region. He holds a master's degree in computer applications (MCA) and CCNP certification.

Sherin Mohamadali is part of the Cisco Services Technology Group and has more than 6 years of experience, mostly in networking and telecommunication. For more than 3 years with Cisco, he has supported enterprise and service provider customers in the Emerging Market East Region for various Cisco collection and reporting tools. He holds a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication.

Remember to use the rating system to let Krishnakanth and Sherin know if you have received an adequate response.  

They might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Network Infastructure sub-community, discussion forum shortly after the event. This event lasts through February 24, 2012.. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

[Shibu1978]

Dears,

What kind of polling is used for collection and what appliance is used ?

Thanks

Shibu

[kkalapur]

Hi Shibu,

SNMP polling and command line(Telnet/SSH) is used for collecting customer network device information.

SNMP collects the Inventory information and command line collects the "show command" outputs for network devices. Apart from inventory and configuration , syslog information is also collected for parsing and analysis of customer data. The collected information is parsed against the rules based intelleuctal capital  available in Cisco backend and respective reports are generated.

Cisco Network Collector (CNC)  or  Common Services Platform Collector (CSPC) is the appliance name.  Its offered as a part of Network Optimization Service (NOS) & Smart Net Total Care (SNTC).

Hope I answered your question and please let me know if you have any further queries.

Thanks,

Krishnakanth

[Shibu1978]

Thanks dear

[ahmedchohan]

Hi guys

I wanted to know what is "Best Practices Configuration Analysis Reports" . Is that available through some cisco tool or is it part of professional services (paid) by cisco.

Thanks

[Sherin Mohamadali]

Hi Ahmed,

Best Practice Configuration Analysis Report is created with the help of analysis done on the configuration collected from customer devices against Cisco Best Practices which is based on Rule Based Intellectual Capital which Cisco had developed. This is helpful in finding the exceptions with the Best Practices advised by Cisco Experts in respective technologies. It is created using Cisco Collection & Reporting tools and is currently being offered as part of Network Optimization Service (NOS) offered by Cisco.

Hope I answered your question, please feel free to ask any more queries/doubts if you have any.

Regards,

Sherin Mohamadali

[ahmedchohan]

Hi

How best would i do reporting for internet bound traffic .

Netflow ? SNMP ?

Objective is to quantify user traffic based on destinations (facebook, cnn, cisco) , source (which user), protocol (http, p2p, ftp) , and bandwidth.

Would the above be possible on a Cisco ISR g2 ?

Any suggestions on the software that would be running for viewing/polling/collecting this info from IOS.

Thanks

Ahmed

[Sherin Mohamadali]

Hi Ahmed,

It’s possible to asses and analyze the port based traffic on devices by conducting audits on the devices where the tool will run for a specified time period by collection SNMP traffic and CLI based outputs. This is the processed and created as audit reports with traffic details and various exceptions. The audits can be platform based or solution based such as 7600 audit, Routing Protocol Audit, IP MPLS audits, etc. This is again part of the Network Optimization Service offered by Cisco.

It’s not possible to evaluate outbound traffic with respect to website, port used and users as mentioned by you, out of these tools. I am not sure whether this is possible on ISR G2, it will be great if you can post this question under ISR please.

Regrads,

Sherin Mohamadali

[Akhtar Samo]

Hi,

Apart from Free Netformx Discovery/Cisco IBLM tool, is there any other tool on CCO to perform following ?

PSIRT Reports, EOX Reports, Best Practices Configuration Analysis Reports, Field Notice Reports, Software Infrastructure Analysis and Audit Reports.

Regards,

Akhtar

[Sherin Mohamadali]

Hi Akhtar,

We have a tool named Cisco Network Collector/Common Services Platform Collector which collects data from the devices and sends it back to Cisco to process it in the backend to create the above mentioned reports. At present this tool is part of the Network Optimization Service (NOS)  which Cisco offers to its customers.

Hope i answered your question correctly. Please let me know if you have any more questions on this.

Regards,

Sherin Mohamadali

[Martin Ermel]

What is about Cisco Prime LMS ?

It also has the possibility to generate EoX and PSIRT Reports, can do software management and does configuration management.

Are the features and reports you are talking about not implemented in LMS? If so, why not? -  is there a reason for this? I think LMS collects quite amount of data from the network that can be used for this..

[kkalapur]

Hi Martin Ermel,

     Cisco Prime LMS deliver most of the reports,  however NOS/SNTC undertaking is more of service offering.   For NOS the  collected information is parsed agianst Cisco rule based intellectual  capital. The information is then used by Cisco Network Consulting  Engineers to add recommendations based on the customer network  understanding. These reports along with the added recommendation by  Cisco experts help the customer to modulate or expand their network as  required.

Making changes as according to the included Best Practises customer would be able to manage a more optimized network.

Regards,

Krishnakanth