Whitepaper Application Performance Management for Enterprise WANs A 3 makes a significant difference to my ability to see what is actually going on and to align my available resource to the most critical business processes. Luis Santiago, Vice President, Organisation & IT, BBVA-London www.exponential-e.com
Introduction The current pace of technological evolution presents the typical enterprise IT organization with many opportunities and many challenges. The availability of cost-effective, feature-rich VPN services provides enhanced capability to expand regionally, streamline operations, and take advantage of globalization opportunities. Due to the critical nature of these business services, a practical solution to manage application traffic is essential. Exponential-e is the first UK provider to offer its business customers an application performance management capability delivered from within its own network. This technical paper details the benefits available to Exponential-e s customers as well as how the capability is deployed. The service provider is able to offer this key differentiator, which Exponential-e calls A 3, following significant investment in Alcatel-Lucent s Application-Assured Business VPN Services solution and through joint collaborative working. Over the past quarter century technological innovations have so permeated the enterprise that, regardless of the size of organization, effectively all major business processes are fundamentally underpinned by business-critical networked applications. Additionally, highly affordable IP/MPLS Layer 2 and Layer 3 virtual private network (VPN) services have created an environment where even modest sized businesses can comfortably afford to connect discrete office locations and reap the operational benefits of centralizing business-critical networked applications over these reliable and secure connections. Put simply, business runs on critical applications and those applications depend on the availability and performance of the corporate network including the WAN. A 3 provides application assurance to the enterprise customer in a highly automated way by deploying the capability from within Exponential-e s core layer 2 MPLS network. The key to successfully unleashing the end customer value while properly abstracting the customer from the intricacies of the operator s network resides within the Alcatel-Lucent suite of network and service management applications, specifically: Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) Alcatel-Lucent 5670 Reporting and Analysis Manager (RAM) 2
1. Market developments The economic downturn has placed pressure on all IT budgets and has in turn lead to increased consolidation and convergence. This has meant now more than ever there is a need to place all traffic onto a single WAN connection as efficiently as possible whilst not having an impact on performance. At the same time all users expect enhanced performance as they consume more and more bandwidth. Employees are experiencing improved performance at home and with the rise of social networking there is a growth in business and personal traffic on the enterprise network. It is now an imperative to take proactive steps in managing the different applications on the WAN. 1.1 The requirements for effective WAN management From the enterprise perspective, the most critical aspects of WAN optimization can be categorized into several silos of activity as described in the Ovum study The adoption of WAN optimization as a managed service, Pauline Trotter and Peter Hall, July 2008: Improve quality of service (QoS) to guarantee the performance of business-critical applications, which can be subdivided into: Application identification Problem analysis Traffic optimization Improve ability to optimize bandwidth and justify bandwidth upgrades, by conducting traffic volumetric analyses for the purposes of: Capacity planning Policy enforcement With current pressure on budgets it makes economic sense to look at solutions where these requirements have been taken into account within the managed service offering. It should not be a necessity to add additional on premise equipment and associated resource to ensure these requirements are effectively met. 3
1.2 Network-based application-assurance A 3 embeds application assurance capabilities within Exponential-e s core network. By incorporating the capability within the network rather than from a device on the customer premise the solution provides a simplified approach and offers: Immediate benefit: As an operator hosted service, the customer begins seeing the benefits of the solution immediately No upfront investment: No appliances or integration work means that the customer need only be concerned with the incremental cost structure associated with the service No hardware management: No WAN Optimization CPE (WOC) appliances means no specialized resources or additional load on IT infrastructure resources such as power and cooling Figure 1: Network-based application assurance By embedding application management and reporting functionality into its network and providing it to business customers as a managed service, Exponential-e delivers a solution that is more aligned with the objectives of the enterprise customer. 4
2. Exponential-e s A 3 service and Application Assurance capability A 3 supports the convergence of IP voice, data and video over Layer 2 corporate WANs. Using Alcatel-Lucent s Application Assured Business networking solution, Exponential-e has leveraged its existing layer 2 MPLS network and service management infrastructure to offer application level visibility and policy control. As a result, Exponential-e can tailor VPN services to each enterprise s unique application performance requirements. 2.1 Portal driven management A 3 provides application management and reporting to businesses at an affordable price and as a managed service which comes combined with its other solutions. A 3 includes an online selfservice portal which gives Exponential-e s customers a unified simple-to-use interface for all the management tools within the solution. This portal abstracts the enterprise customer from the complexities of Exponential-e s network and allows customers to concentrate on the critical aspects of application-assurance. The key areas of focus include: Application reporting Application performance optimization Bandwidth optimization and capacity planning 2.2 Application reporting Understanding the applications that are consuming network resources is a fundamental condition for managing any network. A 3 provides a real-time stateful application identification and management capability on OSI Layers 3 to 7, to dynamically identify and intelligently meter traffic flows, applications and underlying protocols. A 3 leverages this metered data to provide enterprise customers with the critical insight required to effectively manage their WANs. This intelligence is essential for customers to understand the traffic and traffic mix on their networks. It also enables them to periodically assess progress against a known baseline and effectively manage capacity growth. 5
An inventory of applications identified on the enterprise WAN is generated and delivered to enterprise customers through the customer portal. This provides the enterprise with clear visibility of what applications are running on the network, flags newly-identified applications and provides information on how those applications are consuming network resources. 2.3 Application performance optimization Network conditions will impact a user s quality of experience (QoE) differently, depending on the specific application in question. In addition, not all application data traversing the corporate WAN has the same value to the business. With no WAN management, all business data traversing the WAN is treated the same way whether it is an employee engaging in a file transfer or the CEO attempting an internal web-cast. A 3 allows Exponential-e s enterprise customers to define the priority of specific applications in alignment with their business needs. The enterprise IT manager defines the application classification through the customer portal. The translation of the customer portal request into appropriate application quality of service policies associated with specific VPN sites occurs as a result of the A 3 capability to be aware of customers, services and nodes. 2.4 Bandwidth optimization and capacity planning Enterprise IT organizations have intense fiscal responsibilities to the company as a whole, and are expected to do more with less. The enterprise IT department is also accountable for providing an accurate forecast of upcoming expenditures. A 3 is well suited to meeting these challenges. As previously discussed, A 3 enables Exponential-e s enterprise customers to maximize the use of the WAN through application identification. Understanding what applications are using WAN services gives the enterprise IT organization an opportunity to reduce and otherwise manage traffic associated with non-business applications. Clearly, reducing non-business-related traffic increases the business value of the provisioned WAN capacity. Application performance optimization allows business-critical enterprise applications to behave properly even when the WAN is in a congested state. Enabling prioritization of critical applications allows the enterprise to more efficiently manage network resources. A 3 also supports long-term data analysis. This aspect of the solution, powered by the Alcatel- 6
Lucent 5670 RAM, can generate WAN usage trend reports that span months or even years. This visibility into overall WAN usage over time provides the enterprise IT organization with an accurate view of how their needs have been changing over time. This trend can be extrapolated into the future to predict when additional capacity will likely be required. 3. Providing application-assurance as a managed service for enterprise customers 3.1 Overview A 3 provides a scalable, application-centric query and analysis capability specifically designed to support enterprise IT management as well as internal operations within the operator s organization. Within A 3, the Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM functions as a centralized network-based resource warehousing and analyzing application usage data across all customers of an application assured VPN service. The Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM Report Server provides a web services interface that allows for seamless integration of RAM analytics with an operator s customer service portal. 3.2 Application identification Maximizing the business value generated from the WAN begins with understanding what applications intended or otherwise, are running over the WAN. A 3 provides an integrated capability to understand what applications are present and the overall impact those applications are having on the network. 3.2.1 Creating an application inventory A 3 delivers a fundamental capability to provide stateful application traffic flow inspection and application assurance for small, medium or large enterprise Layer 2 services. This intelligence, generated by the Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM, provides an immediate awareness of applications running on the WAN over the inspection period. In an ideal world, assessing application traffic would be a very basic task some applications have value for the business, others do not. In most cases, however, it is much more complicated: Some applications are a benefit to the business when used by certain groups within the organization, but not when used by other groups Some applications provide a certain amount of benefit to the business, but are subject to 7
employee abuse Some applications provide no direct benefit to the business, but contribute to employee morale Clearly more information than a simple inventory is required to determine if applications should be allowed on the network or not. 3.2.2 Site analysis Corporate functions are often grouped by location that is, Site 1 might be the corporate headquarters with primary responsibility for business and marketing; Site 2 might be an R&D location with responsibilities for product development and support; Sites 3 to 25 might be regional sales centers. Given that the activities and functions of these sites are dramatically different, it is reasonable that the traffic coming from, and going to, those sites would be notably different as well. Analyzing the traffic on a site-by-site basis will produce a better result, as the functions of each site can be a contributing factor to whether or not specific applications create business value. A 3 provides a range of reports to help IT managers better understand WAN traffic at a particular site: Application trend reports: provide visibility into which applications comprise the traffic to and from the VPN site Top applications reports: identify the top resource-consuming applications Utilization reports: illustrate WAN traffic as a percentage of provisioned capacity to help IT managers understand if and when additional bandwidth will be required 8
Figure 2: An example analysis of application flows to a site 3.2.3 Incorporating volumetric analysis In many cases it is not the presence of an application that creates problems on the WAN, it is the volume of that application traffic going over the network that causes the problems. Prohibiting a minimally-used application on the WAN will likely have a negligible impact on the overall performance of the network, but may significantly affect employee satisfaction. On the other hand, prohibiting or rate-limiting a non-business application that is identified as a significant drain on corporate resources is justifiable and represents a reasonable return (positive impact to performance) on the effort. 3.2.4 Usage-based threshold crossing alerts If understanding the amount of traffic being generated by an application is useful, then it stands to reason that knowing when, and how often, application usage exceeds certain predetermined levels is even more useful. A 3 provides a usage-based threshold crossing alert mechanism that can be used to track, and even participate in the management of specific applications or application groups. 9
Enterprise customers can define usage-based thresholds on any defined report. As an example, an enterprise customer may categorize all of the non-business-related traffic into a low priority application group. With A 3, the customer may define a threshold value for low priority application usage (say five percent of the available bandwidth). If the low priority application usage exceeds the threshold an alert will be raised. That alert may simply be used to visibly change the report (turn an element red), send an e-mail notification to the IT administrator, or possibly even trigger a new policy to drop or throttle low priority traffic on the network. 3.2.5 Top X analysis Volumetric analysis is often used as a mechanism to identify anomalous activity without a clear definition of exactly what activity that might be. Top X analysis allows enterprise customers to recognize top talkers in various categories. Key Top X reports provided within A 3 include: Top sites report: This report identifies sites whose usage is abnormally high, or sites where the QoE is impacted, as identified through an abnormally high level of dropped packets allowing enterprise IT managers to easily identify areas of concern. Top applications report: This report can be run VPN wide, or for a specific set of sites; it determines which applications are using the largest share of the WAN capacity and how that usage changes over time. 3.3 How it works A 3 provides a scalable reporting infrastructure for a network-based WAN management solution. It provides data warehousing and aggregation services. Raw details collected on a periodic basis and relates that data to contextual information, such as customers and VPN sites, and stores it a database. As a general rule, the value of highly granular data decreases over time, while the value of trend data increases over time. In other words, highly granular information, such as raw data, is generally used to support tactical activities such as troubleshooting and diagnostics, and has a useful life measured in hours or days. Beyond that period, the usefulness of the data decreases rapidly. Conversely, operational analysis and strategic planning require an information span of months or even years, but don t require a high degree of data granularity (that is, the overall trend becomes important, not the specific events that contribute to the trend). 10
With this in mind, A 3 provides data aggregation services. Raw data (the granularity of which is dependent upon the defined application assurance accounting policy) is aggregated into hourly data. The hourly aggregate loses the specific details of each contributing transaction, but maintains the overall average values, as well as high and low watermarks. Similarly, hourly data is aggregated into daily data. A 3 provides a portal-based infrastructure for the management and authoring of reports. A catalog of approximately 200 application-aware and usage-analysis reports provides accurate and timely decision-supporting intelligence for customers, services applications, and IP traffic flows. Exponential-e can generate on-demand reports, or schedule reports to be run at pre-defined intervals. Using the scheduler feature, customer-facing reports can be scheduled to run on a customer s monthly bill date. 4. The service portal included with A 3 The service portal is a web-based application that provides custom network management functionality and abstracted network management functionality to enterprise IT customers. The portal provides simplified user interfaces for network management tasks streamlining operations within the operator s organization and abstracting the enterprise customer from the details of Exponential-e s network. The service portal can deliver highly differentiated views to users, which means that Exponential-e can tailor the portal to the needs of individual customers. Figure 3: The Alcatel-Lucent AA-BVS service portal 11
4.1 Enterprise customer portal Much of the value of A3 is made available to the enterprise customer through the service portal. Access to reporting, application management and the optimization capability are all provided through the web-based application, which can be specifically tailored to meet the unique requirements of business customers. Figure 4: An example of a service portal 12
4.1.1 Access to intelligence The service portal provides highly customizable access to a selection of reports. Figure 5: Selecting reports via the Alcatel-Lucent AA-BVS service portal 4.1.2 Application management One of the most powerful tools available to an enterprise IT department is the ability to prioritize applications on the network. A detailed implementation of application prioritization requires at least a reasonable understanding of Exponential-e s infrastructure, routes, paths, QoS management and queuing. The service portal enables a complete and simple abstraction from Exponential-e s network architecture as well as technical QoS management details. The service portal provides a simplified management view to the enterprise IT department relating the customer s specific application behaviour and treatment with the agreements in place. The enterprise customer is able to achieve the effect it is looking for: it can improve the quality of experience for critical applications without a massive outlay of capital. The enterprise is able to service itself without delving into the complexities of the underlying network. 13
Figure 6: Defining service assurance parameters via the service portal 5. Conclusion A 3 is based on the Alcatel-Lucent Application-Assured Business Networking solution. A 3 means Exponential-e can align its service offerings with enterprises business objectives and application performance goals. By enabling network-based application performance assurance for business VPN services, Exponential-e has clearly differentiated its corporate network service offering. The network and service management components Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM, Alcatel-Lucent 5670 RAM and the service portal are the key components of the solution that translate the technical capability of Exponential-e s layer 2 MPLS network into tangible value for the enterprise customer. A 3 meets head-on one of the key business challenges for enterprises today: ensuring that their business applications are operating as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. With the solution in place, enterprises know exactly what applications are running on their VPNs and how they are running. Enterprise get direct access through a web portal to detailed reports on the efficiency of their business services. For more information please contact Exponential-e on +44 (0) 845 470 4001 or visit www.exponential-e.com/a-cubed 14