4.5. Monitoring points workflow
This drill-down workflow is designed to analyze hop-by-hop network performance by utilizing your monitoring points, which are configured using analytics labels. It includes eleven dashboards organized across four hierarchical levels, drilling down from the Monitoring Points Overview dashboard to the more detailed Troubleshooting dashboards. Dashboards in this workflow can traverse up, down, and across to switch views and perspectives on the same data set. Zoom out by using the browser's back button or navigate laterally to dashboards with the same level of detail but from different perspectives, such as endpoints, protocols, or services. To learn more, see Navigate the workflows.
The following diagram gives you an overview of the different dashboards and their hierarchical relationship:
The following information summarizes each level of the workflow:
- Monitoring Points Overview
The Monitoring Points Overview is the top level of the Explore Monitoring Points workflow. Here, all of your monitoring points that have been active for the last 24 hours are listed.
Using a time-series database, metrics such as throughput, network latency, server latency, client latency, connections, and the percentage of connection failures for each monitoring point are visualized and analyzed in real-time. The default metric displayed on the graph is throughput.
- Level 1
The Level 1 dashboard is designed to help determine whether performance issues exist for an individual monitoring point. It compares metrics across various aspects of each monitoring point, such as protocols, endpoints, and services. The default metric displayed on the graph is throughput.
Metrics for throughput, network latency, server latency, client latency, connections, and the percentage of connection failures for each monitoring point are displayed.
One variable for Resolution is available at the top of the dashboard. To learn more about this variable, see Dashboard variables.
Level 1 dashboards include:
Monitoring Points by Protocols
Monitoring Points by Endpoints
Monitoring Points by Services
Protocol by Monitoring Points in the Protocols workflow
Services by Monitoring Points in the Services workflow
- Level 2
Level 2 dashboards help narrow down the physical or logical part of the network that is having a problem. You select a specific monitoring point and examine metrics at a distinct protocol, endpoint, or service associated with that monitoring point. The same metrics are available for Level 1 and Level 2 dashboards. The default metric displayed on the graph is throughput.
Metrics for throughput Tx, throughput Rx, network latency, server, latency, client latency, outbound connections, and inbound connections for each monitoring point are displayed.
One variable for Resolution is available at the top of the dashboard. To learn more about this variable, see Dashboard variables.
Level 2 dashboards include:
Monitoring Point and Endpoint by Protocols
Monitoring Point and Service by Endpoints
Protocols and Monitoring Points by Endpoints in the Protocols workflow
- Level 3
The Level 3 dashboard, Troubleshooting Monitoring Points (Endpoint Summary), is used to troubleshoot issues for a monitoring point at specific endpoints. If the IP address is known, you can start troubleshooting directly from this dashboard. As a starting point, it provides various metrics such as throughput Tx, throughput Rx, packets TX, packets Rx, bytes Tx, bytes Rx, maximum flows Tx, maximum flows Rx, and server or client latency. The default metric displayed on the graph is throughput Tx. Additional metrics are grouped to help troubleshoot different types of observed issues. To learn more, see Metrics for advanced analysis.
Four variables are available at the top of the dashboard: Endpoint, Monitoring Point, cStor, and Resolution. To learn more about these variables, see Dashboard variables.
PCAP files can be downloaded for a particular endpoint from the cStor Download tag or a specified range using the cPacket Capture panel. To learn more, see Capture packet data.
- Level 4
The level 4 dashboard, Troubleshooting Monitoring Point (Endpoint Conversations), is utilized for advanced and targeted analysis of a specific data point or narrow time range. An on-demand fetch of the analytics is always required using the cPacket Analytics panel. To learn more, see On-demand analytics collection.
Six variables are available at the top of the dashboard: Endpoint, Peer, Monitoring Point, cStor, Resolution, and Include Excluded Services. To learn more about these variables, see Dashboard variables.
See Level 3 for metric and packet capture information.