Cisco Wide Area Application Services Configuration Guide (Software Version 6.2.3)

Monitoring Graphs and Charts

The default System Dashboard window contains the following graphical displays about the application traffic processed by your WAAS system:

• Traffic Summary chart—Displays the applications with the highest percentage of traffic in the WAAS network for the last hour.
• Effective WAN Capacity graph—Displays the effective increased bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of WAAS optimization, as a multiple of the actual bandwidth.
• Traffic Volume and Reduction graph—Displays the original and optimized traffic volume and percentage of traffic reduction over the last hour.
• Compression Summary chart—Displays the ten applications with the highest percentage of traffic reduction for the WAAS network for the last hour. The percent calculation excludes pass-through traffic.

Numbers shown in charts and graphs are rounded to whole units (KB, MB, or GB), while those displayed in tables are rounded to three decimal places. Data values exported to CSV files are in bytes, and are therefore, not rounded.

You can customize the graphical displays and tables that are displayed on the system dashboard. For more information, see Customizing a Dashboard or Report. Individual charts are described in more detail in WAAS Chart Descriptions.

Much of the device, statistical, and alarm information that is presented in the system dashboard and associated graphs and charts is also available programmatically through the monitoring API. For more information, see Cisco Wide Area Application Services API Reference .

Note You must synchronize the clock on each WAE device within 5 minutes of the primary and secondary WAAS Central Managers for statistics to be consistent and reliable. For information on using an NTP server to keep all your WAAS devices synchronized, see Configuring NTP Settings in Chapter 10, “Configuring Other System Settings.” Additionally, if the network delay in the Central Manager receiving statistical updates from the WAEs is greater than 5 minutes, statistics aggregation may not operate as expected.

Note For information on how to troubleshoot device alarms, see Troubleshooting Devices Using Alerts in Chapter 16, “Troubleshooting Your WAAS Network.”

Devices Window

The Devices window lists all the WAAS devices that are registered with the WAAS Central Manager. To view this list, choose Devices > All Devices in the WAAS Central Manager GUI.

Figure 15-2 shows an example of the Devices window.

Figure 15-2 Devices Window

This window displays the following information about each device:

• Services enabled on the device. See Table 15-1 for a description of these services.
• IP address of the device.
• Management Status (Online, Offline, Pending, or Inactive). For more information about the status, see Device Alarms in Chapter 16, “Troubleshooting Your WAAS Network.”
• Device Status. The system status reporting mechanism uses four alarm lights to identify problems that have to be resolved. Each light represents a different alarm level as follows:

– Green—No alarms (the system is in excellent health)

– Yellow—Minor alarms

– Orange—Major alarms

– Red—Critical alarms

When you hover your mouse over the alarm light bar, a message provides further details about the number of alarms. Click the alarm light bar to troubleshoot the device. For more information, see Troubleshooting Devices Using Alerts in Chapter 16, “Troubleshooting Your WAAS Network.”.

• Location associated with the device. For more information about locations, see Chapter3, “Using Device Groups and Device Locations” You can view reports that aggregate data from all the devices in a location. For more information, see Location-Level Reports.
• Software version installed and running on the device. For WAAS Express and AppNav-XE devices, both the Cisco IOS and the WAAS Express or AppNav-XE software versions are shown.
• Device Type. If you see a type such as OE294, the numbers refer to the model number, such as WAVE-294. NME-WAE refers to an NME-WAE module. For WAAS Express and AppNav-XE devices, the router platform is displayed. For vWAAS devices, OE-VWAAS is displayed, and for Cisco WAAS for Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR) devices, ISR-WAAS is displayed.
• License Status. Displays the installed licenses. See Table 15-2 for a description of the possible values.

WAE devices that are at a later software version level than the WAAS Central Manager are displayed in red. Also, if the standby WAAS Central Manager has a different version level from the primary WAAS Central Manager, the standby WAAS Central Manager is displayed in red.

You can filter your view of the devices in the list by using the Filter and Match If fields above the list. Enter a filter string in the text field and click Go to apply the filter. The filter settings are shown below the list. Click Clear Filter to clear the filter and show all the devices. Filtering allows you to find devices that match the criteria that you set.

Note After the devices has been registered to the WAAS Central Manager (WCM), a WCM DB VACUUM (runs between 1 AM – 2 AM) process takes more time (Min:2 min, Avg:7 min, Max:25min) due to the augmented load on computing resources.
- Some of the WAEs may go temporarily offline. They are online automatically once the VACUUM process is complete.
- Statistics Aggregation threads may take more than 5 minutes and the same would be indicated in the logs. As a result statistics samples, might be missing at network level.
- User, including the administrator will not be able to use (login) the WCM as the complete DB will be locked.

Device Dashboard Window

The Device Dashboard window provides detailed information about a WAAS device, including device model (such as WAVE-7541-K9 or OE-VWAAS-KVM), IP address, interception method, and device-specific charts. (See Figure 15-3.)

To access the Device Dashboard window, choose Devices > device-name.

Figure 15-3 Device Dashboard Window

The Device Dashboard window for a WAAS Express or AppNav-XE device looks slightly different. It lacks some WAE-specific information and controls.

From the Device Dashboard window, you can perform the following tasks:

• View charts and graphs about the application traffic processed by the selected WAE device. (No charts or graphs are displayed if a WAAS Central Manager device is selected.)
• Customize the charts displayed in the window. For more information, see Customizing a Dashboard or Report. Individual charts are described in more detail in WAAS Chart Descriptions.
• View basic details, such as whether the device is online, the device’s IP address and hostname, the software version running on the device, and the amount of memory installed in the device, the license status, and so forth.
• View the device groups to which the device belongs. For more information about device groups, see Chapter3, “Using Device Groups and Device Locations” (Not available on AppNav-XE devices.)
• View the users that are defined on the device and unlock any locked-out users. For more information, see Viewing and Unlocking Device Users. (Not available on WAAS Express and AppNav-XE devices.)
• Click the Update link to update the software on the device. For more information, see Chapter14, “Maintaining Your WAAS System” (Not available on WAAS Express and AppNav-XE devices.)
• Click the Telnet icon to establish a Telnet session into the device and issue CLI commands.
• Click the Delete Device icon to delete the device.
• Click the Full Update icon to reapply the device configuration from the Central Manager to the device. (Not available on WAAS Express and AppNav-XE devices.)
• Click the Reload icon to reboot the device. (Not available on WAAS Express and AppNav-XE devices.)
• Click the Restore Default Policies icon to restore the default predefined policies on the device. For more information, see Restoring Optimization Policies and Class Maps in Chapter 12, “Configuring Application Acceleration.” (Not available on AppNav-XE devices.)
• Assign and unassign the device to device groups. For more information, see Chapter3, “Using Device Groups and Device Locations” (Not available on AppNav-XE devices.)
• For a WAAS Express device, a WAAS Enabled Interfaces item shows the number of interfaces on which WAAS optimization is enabled. You can click the number to go to the Network Interfaces configuration window, which displays device interface details and allows you to enable or disable optimization on the available interfaces. For more details, see Enabling or Disabling Optimization on WAAS Express Interfaces in Chapter 6, “Configuring Network Settings.”
• For a WAAS Express device, you can view the DRE item to determine if the device supports data redundancy elimination (DRE) optimization, which is not supported on some WAAS Express device models. This item reads Supported or Unsupported.
• For a WAAS Express device, you can view the SSL item to determine if SSL acceleration is available. This item reads Available or Unavailable.
• For a vWAAS device, the No. of CPUs, Max TCP Connections, and Interception Method fields are shown. For more details, see Chapter 5, “Configuring Traffic Interception.”
• On an AppNav Controller, an AppNav Cluster item shows any defined AppNav Clusters. You can click a cluster name to go to that cluster’s home window. Also, an AppNav Policy item shows defined AppNav policies, if any. Click a policy name to go to the policy configuration window.

Device Status Dashboard Window

The Device Status Dashboard window, shown in Figure 15-4, lists all the WAAS devices that are registered with the WAAS Central Manager. To view this list, choose Home > Monitor> Network> Device Status in the WAAS Central Manager GUI.

Figure 15-4 Device Status Dashboard Window

Table 15-3 displays information about each column in the Device Status Dashboard window:

Table 15-3 Column and Field Descriptions for the Device Status Dashboard Window

Device Status Field or Column	Device Status Column Description
Time Frame drop-down list	Choose one of the following time frame to display status for the device: Last Hour Last Day Last Week Last Month Custom dates Note Data for Management Status and Active Connections is displayed only when you select Last Hour. For more information on time frames, see Customizing a Dashboard or Report
Device	The name of the device.
Management Status	A status of Online, Offline, Pending, or Inactive. For more information on device management status and alarms related to device management status, see Device Alarms in Chapter 16, “Troubleshooting Your WAAS Network.”
Original Traffic	The amount of original traffic, in GB, passing through the device.
Optimized Traffic	The amount of optimized traffic, in GB, passing through the device.
Pass-Through Reduction (%)	The percentage of traffic reduction for the time period specified in the Time Frame drop-down list.
Effective Capacity (X)	The effective bandwidth capacity of the device as a result of optimization.
Peak Connection	The peak optimized connections for the device.
Device Connection Limit	The maximum connection limit for the device.
Total Active Connections	The total number of current active connections for the device.

Device Status Report

You can choose to view the Device Status report as a pdf or a.csv file by selecting the respective icons on the dashboard. The Time Zone option enables you to customize the time zone for the report, based on your preference. For more information on setting time zones, see Customizing a Dashboard or Report.

You can filter your view of the devices in the list by using the Filter and Match If fields above the list. Enter a filter string in the text field and click the Go button to apply the filter. The filter settings are shown below the list. Click the Clear Filter button to clear the filter and show all devices. Filtering allows you to find devices in the list that match the criteria that you set.

Viewing and Unlocking Device Users

To view the users defined on a WAAS device, go to Devices > device-name, and then, from the device-name menu, choose Device Users. On a Central Manager device, choose CM Users).

The list of users is displayed in a table, which shows the username, number of login failures, maximum number of login failures allowed, and the time of the last failed login. To view the details of a user, click the View icon next to that username.

If a user is locked out because the user has reached the maximum number of failed login attempts, unlock the user by checking the check box next to the username and clicking Unlock below the table.

The WAAS Central Manager Report Panel

An example of a report is shown in Figure 15-5.

Figure 15-5 Report Pane

Taskbar icons and controls across the top of the dashboard or report allow you to do the following:

• Time Frame—Allows you to choose one of the several common time frames from the drop-down list:

– Last Hour —Displays data for the past hour, in five-minute intervals (default). You can change the interval using the System.monitoring.collectRate configuration setting described in Modifying the Default System Configuration Properties in Chapter 10, “Configuring Other System Settings.”

– Last Day —Displays data for the past day (in hourly intervals).

– Last Week —Displays data for the past week (in daily intervals).

– Last Month —Displays data for the past month (in daily intervals).

– Custom—Enter starting and ending dates in the From and To fields. Click the calendar icon to choose dates from a pop-up calendar.

The time frame setting is stored individually for each report and Central Manager user. Additionally, the System.monitoring.timeFrameSettings system property controls the system default time frame setting (see Modifying the Default System Configuration Properties in Chapter 10, “Configuring Other System Settings”).

Note If you create a chart with a custom date setting that spans more than two months prior to the current date, data for the most recent two months are plotted with daily data and data for all the earlier months are plotted with aggregated monthly data. The chart might appear to have a large drop in traffic for the most recent two months because the daily traffic totals are likely to be much smaller than the monthly traffic totals. However, this difference is normal.

• Time Zone—Allows you to choose one of the following options from the Time Zone drop-down list:

– UTC —Sets the time zone of the report to UTC.

– CM Local Time —Sets the time zone of the report to the time zone of the WAAS Central Manager (default).

When you change the time zone, the change applies globally to all reports. The time zone setting is stored individually for each Central Manager user.

• Save—Saves the dashboard or report with its current settings. The next time you view it, it is displayed with these settings.
• Save As—Saves the report with its current settings under a new name. A dialog box allows you to enter a report name and an optional description. You can enter only the following characters: numbers, letters, spaces, periods, hyphens, and underscores. The report will be available in the Monitor > Reports > Reports Central window.
• Customize—Allows you to add a chart or table to a dashboard or report. For information on adding a chart or table, see Adding a Chart or Table.
• Schedule—Allows you to schedule reports to be generated once, or periodically, such as hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. When a scheduled report is generated, you can have a PDF copy of the report e-mailed to you automatically.

– In the Date field, enter the schedule date in the format DD/MM/YYYY or click the calendar icon to display a calendar from which to choose the date.

– From the Hours drop-down list, choose the hours. The time represents the local time at the WAAS Central Manager.

– From the Minutes drop-down list, choose the minutes. The time represents the local time at the WAAS Central Manager.

– From the Frequency drop-down list, choose Once, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly for the report frequency.

– In the No. of Reports field, enter the number of times that a reoccurring report is to be generated. (After a report is generated a specified number of times, the report is no longer generated.)

– In the Email Id(s) field, enter the email addresses of the report recipients, separated by commas.

– In the Email Subject field, enter the subject of the email message.

• Reports—Allows you to view the scheduled reports. For instructions about viewing scheduled reports, see Viewing or Deleting a Scheduled Report.
• PDF—Generates a PDF format of a report, including the charts and table data. If you want a custom logo in your PDF report, you can upload the logo by choosing Home Dashboard > Admin > Custom Logo, and clicking Upload. The custom logo is displayed in the PDF format of the report. Additionally, when you schedule a report, you can select Custom Logo for the logo to appear on the scheduled report. This option is available only when you have uploaded the custom logo.
• Export—Exports the chart and table statistical data to a CSV file. The statistical data shown in charts is rounded to whole units (KB, MB, or GB), while the exported data contains exact byte values.

Controls at the top of individual charts allow you to customize the chart as follows (not all controls are available in every chart):

• Chart title—Allows you to click and drag in order to move the chart to a different location in the report pane.
• Edit icon—Allows you to edit the chart settings, as described in Configuring Chart Settings.
• Collapse/Expand icon—Allows you to collapse or expand the chart. When a chart is collapsed, this icon changes to Expand, which restores the chart to its normal size.
• Close icon—Closes the chart.
• Tabs—Allows you to have a choice of multiple tab views that you can access by clicking the desired tab name. Note that not all charts have this feature.
• Check box to show additional data—Allows you to check the check box labeled with an optional data statistic to include the data in the chart. Note that not all charts have this feature.

Chart-type icons at the bottom of individual charts allow you to choose the chart type as follows: column chart, line chart, area chart, stacked line chart, stacked area chart. Note that not all charts have this feature.

Adding a Chart or Table

To add a chart or table to a dashboard or report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the dashboard or report chart panel, click the Customize icon in the taskbar. The Customize window is displayed, as shown in Figure 15-6.

Figure 15-6 Customize Window

Step 2 Expand any of the chart categories by clicking on the small triangle next to the corresponding category.

Step 3 Check the check box next to each chart or table that you want to be displayed as a report. Individual charts are described in more detail in WAAS Chart Descriptions.

Charts that are currently included in the dashboard or report are marked with an asterisk (*). A report can contain a maximum of eight charts and tables (the Network Summary report can contain 12 charts and tables).

Note At the WAAS Express device level, only charts for supported accelerators are available.

Step 4 To preview a chart, click the chart’s title. The preview is displayed on the right of the pane.

Step 5 Click OK.

To delete a chart or table from a dashboard or report, click Close on the chart and save the report.

Configuring Chart Settings

To configure the data presented in a chart, follow these steps:

Step 1 Click the Edit icon in the upper right corner of a chart. The Settings window is displayed.

Note Not all settings are available for all chart types.

Step 2 (Optional) From the Traffic Direction drop-down list, choose one of the following options:

• Bidirectional —Includes LAN-to-WAN traffic as well as WAN-to-LAN traffic traveling through this WAAS device.
• Inbound —Includes traffic from the WAN to the client through this WAAS device.
• Outbound —Includes traffic traveling from a client to the WAN through this WAAS device.

Step 3 (Optional) From the Access Mode drop-down list, choose one of the following options:

• Both—Displays statistics for both single-sided and double-sided optimization.
• With WAAS Peer—Display statistics for double-sided optimization.
• Without WAAS Peer—Displays statistics for single-sided optimization.
  
  Use these options are to include or exclude single-sided optimization. The single-side statistics option is available only for the Traffic Summary, Effective WAN capacity, Traffic Volume and Reduction, Compression Summary, Traffic Summary over time, Compression Summary over time, Throughput Summary and Optimized Connections Over Time charts.

Step 4 (Optional) From the Select Series For drop-down list, choose one of the following:

• Application —The chart data is based on application statistics.
• Classifier —The chart data is based on classifier (class map) statistics.

Step 5 (Optional) In the Application or Classifier list, check the check box next to the applications or classifiers whose statistics you want to include in the chart data. To include all the applications, check the All Traffic check box. You can filter the list items by using the Quick Filter above the list. These lists are available only for some chart types.

Step 6 (Optional) Some charts have other types of data series from which to choose. Check the check box next to each of the data series that you want to include in the chart data.

Step 7 Click OK.

Note Data collection for applications and classifiers occurs at slightly different times in the Central Manager. Therefore, the statistics can be different when viewing the same time period for an application and a classifier that report similar data.

TCP Optimization Charts

The following TCP optimization charts are available:

• Compression Summary
• Compression Summary Over Time
• Effective WAN Capacity
• Throughput Summary
• Traffic Summary
• Traffic Summary Over Time
• Traffic Volume and Reduction

Compression Summary

The Compression Summary chart displays a bar chart depicting the percentage of traffic reduction (excluding pass-through traffic) for the top ten applications with the highest percentage of traffic reduction. Two additional tabs allow you to see the compression of the top ten applications by volume and the bottom ten applications with the lowest compression.

Formula:

% Reduction Excluding Pass-Through = (Original Excluding Pass-Through – Optimized) / (Original Excluding Pass-Through)

Compression Summary Over Time

The Compression Summary Over Time chart displays a graph of the percentage of total traffic that was reduced by using the WAAS optimization techniques. This chart excludes pass-through traffic in the results. You can customize the chart by choosing specific applications to include. The default is all traffic.

Formula:

% Reduction = (Original Excluding Pass-Through – Optimized) / (Original Excluding Pass-Through)

Effective WAN Capacity

The Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective increased bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of WAAS optimization. You can choose which applications to include. The default is all traffic.

Formula:

Effective WAN Capacity = 1 / (1-% Reduction Excluding Pass-Through)

% Reduction Excluding Pass-Through = (Original Excluding Pass-Through – Optimized) / (Original Excluding Pass-Through)

Throughput Summary

The Throughput Summary chart displays the amount of average and peak throughput for the LAN-to-WAN (outbound) or WAN-to-LAN (inbound) directions depending on the selected tab. The throughput units (KBps, MBps, or GBps) at the left side vary depending on the range. The Peak Throughput series is not applicable for Last Hour graphs. This chart is available only at the device and location levels. The chart, which is in PDF, displays a maximum of 10 series.

Formula:

% Reduction Excluding Pass-Through = (Original Excluding Pass-Through – Optimized) / (Original Excluding Pass-Through)

Note The WAN to LAN Throughput and the LAN to WAN Throughput charts for the Last Week and Last Month time periods do not display peak throughput data until after two days of data have accumulated. You may see 0 for peak throughput if it has been less than two days since a new WAAS software installation or upgrade.

Traffic Summary

The Traffic Summary chart displays the top nine applications that have the highest percentage of traffic as seen by WAAS. Each section in the pie chart represents an application as a percentage of the total traffic on your network or device. Unclassified, unmonitored, and applications with less than 2 percent of the total traffic are grouped together into a tenth category named Other Traffic (shown only if it totals at least 0.1 percent of all traffic). You can choose to display Original traffic or Optimized traffic by clicking the tab, and you can include pass-through traffic by checking the Include Pass-Through check box.

Formula:

(App Traffic/ Total Traffic) * 100

App Traffic is the Original traffic (Original Excluding Pass-Through) or Optimized traffic (Optimized Excluding Pass-Through) flowing for an application.

Traffic Summary Over Time

The Traffic Summary Over Time chart displays a graph depicting the amount of original or optimized traffic, depending on the selected tab. You can include pass-through traffic by checking the Pass-Through check box. You can customize the chart by choosing specific applications to include. The default is all traffic.

Traffic Volume and Reduction

The Traffic Volume and Reduction chart compares the amount of original and optimized traffic in a bar chart and displays the percentage of traffic reduction as a line. Pass-through traffic is excluded. The traffic units (bytes, KB, MB, or GB) at the right side depend upon the range. The percentage of traffic reduction is shown at the left side of the chart. You can customize the chart by choosing specific applications to include. The default is all traffic.

Formula:

% Reduction Excluding Pass-Through = (Original Excluding Pass-Through – Optimized) / (Original Excluding Pass-Through)

Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• HTTP Acceleration Charts
• HTTPS Acceleration Charts
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Acceleration Charts
• Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) Acceleration Charts
• Network File System (NFS) Acceleration Charts
• Server Message Block (SMB) Acceleration Charts
• Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) Acceleration Charts

HTTP Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• HTTP: Connection Details
• HTTP: Effective WAN Capacity
• HTTP: Estimated Time Savings
• HTTP: Optimization Count
• HTTP: Optimization Techniques
• HTTP: Response Time Savings

HTTP: Connection Details

The HTTP Connection Details chart displays the HTTP session connection statistics, showing the average number of active HTTP connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour.) Click the Details tab to display the newly handled HTTP connections, optimized connections, dropped connections, and handed off connections over time.

HTTP: Effective WAN Capacity

The HTTP Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of HTTP acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and HTTP traffic is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic. Verify that monitoring is enabled for the web application.

HTTP: Estimated Time Savings

The HTTP Estimated Time Savings chart displays a graph of the estimated percentage of the response time saved by the HTTP accelerator due to SharePoint prefetch optimization and metadata caching.

HTTP: Optimization Count

The HTTP Optimization Count chart displays a graph of the number of different kinds of optimizations performed by the HTTP accelerator. These optimizations are displayed in different colors. The optimizations included in this chart are metadata caching and SharePoint prefetch.

HTTP: Optimization Techniques

The HTTP Optimization Techniques pie chart displays the different kinds of optimizations performed by the HTTP accelerator. The optimizations included in this chart are metadata caching, suppressed server compression, SharePoint prefetch, and DRE hinting.

HTTP: Response Time Savings

The HTTP Response Time Savings chart displays a graph of the round-trip response time saved by the HTTP accelerator due to metadata caching and SharePoint prefetch optimizations. These optimizations are displayed in different colors. The time units (milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend on the range.

HTTPS Acceleration Charts

This section describes the following charts:

• HTTPS: Connection Details
• HTTPS: Effective WAN Capacity
• HTTPS: Estimated Time Savings
• HTTPS: Optimization Count
• HTTPS: Optimization Techniques
• HTTPS: Response Time Savings

HTTPS: Connection Details

The HTTPS Connection Details chart displays the HTTPS session connection statistics, showing the average number of active HTTPS connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour). Click the Details tab to display the newly handled HTTPS connections and optimized connections.

HTTPS: Effective WAN Capacity

The HTTPS Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of HTTP acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and SSL traffic (which includes HTTPS traffic) is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic. Make sure that monitoring is enabled for the SSL application.

HTTPS: Estimated Time Savings

The HTTPS Estimated Time Savings chart displays the estimated percentage of response time saved by using metadata caching for HTTPS connections.

HTTPS: Optimization Count

The HTTPS Optimization Count chart displays a graph of the number of different kinds of metadata caching optimizations performed by the HTTPS accelerator. These optimizations are displayed in different colors.

HTTPS: Optimization Techniques

The HTTPS Optimization Techniques pie chart displays the different kinds of optimizations performed by the HTTPS accelerator. The optimizations included in this chart are metadata caching, suppressed server compression, and DRE hinting.

HTTPS: Response Time Savings

The HTTPS Response Time Savings chart displays a graph of the round-trip response time saved by the HTTPS accelerator due to metadata caching optimizations, which are displayed in different colors. The time units (milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend on the range.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• SSL: Acceleration Bypass Reason
• SSL: Connection Details
• SSL: Effective WAN Capacity

SSL: Acceleration Bypass Reason

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Acceleration Bypass Reason pie chart displays the reasons because of which SSL traffic is not accelerated: version mismatch, unknown, nonmatching domain, server name indication mismatch, cipher mismatch, revocation failure, certificate verification failure, other failure, and non-SSL traffic.

SSL: Connection Details

The SSL Connection Details chart displays the SSL session connection statistics, showing the average number of active SSL connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour). Click the Details tab to display the newly handled SSL connections, optimized connections, handed-off connections, dropped connections, HTTPS connections, and Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) connections over SSL.

SSL: Effective WAN Capacity

The SSL Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of SSL acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and SSL traffic is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic. Verify that monitoring is enabled for the SSL application.

Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• MAPI: Acceleration Bypass Reason
• MAPI: Average Response Time Saved
• MAPI: Connection Details
• MAPI: Effective WAN Capacity
• MAPI: Request Optimization
• MAPI: Response Time Optimization
• MAPI: Average Accelerated Client Sessions
• MAPI: Handled Traffic Pattern
• MAPI: Connection Details

MAPI: Acceleration Bypass Reason

The Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) Acceleration Bypass Reason pie chart displays the reasons because of which encrypted MAPI traffic is not accelerated: acceleration disabled, secret retriever disabled, unsupported cipher, unsupported authentication mechanism, misconfigured domain identity, failure in secret retrieval, general security failure, insufficient system resources, and recovery mode connections.

Click the Non-Encrypted tab to display the bypass reasons for unencrypted MAPI traffic: reservation failure (non-overload), reservation failure (overload), signed MAPI request, malformed RPC packet, handover request from peer, unsupported server version, user in denied list, unsupported client version, secured connections (encrypted), unsupported DCERPC protocol version, association group not tracked, and other.

MAPI: Average Response Time Saved

The MAPI Average Response Time Saved chart displays a graph of the estimated percentage of response time saved by the MAPI accelerator. The time units (microseconds, milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend upon the range.

MAPI: Connection Details

The MAPI Connection Details chart displays the MAPI session connection statistics, showing the average number of active MAPI connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exacat number for the last hour). Click the Details tab to display the newly handled MAPI connections, optimized connections, handed-off connections, and dropped connections. Click the Optimized Encrypted vs Non-Encrypted tab to display the new encrypted and unencrypted MAPI connections.

MAPI: Effective WAN Capacity

The MAPI Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of MAPI acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and MAPI traffic is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic. Verify that monitoring is enabled for the Email-and-Messaging application.

MAPI: Request Optimization

The MAPI Request Optimization chart displays the percentage of local and remote MAPI command responses. A local response is a response that is sent to the client from the local WAE. A remote response comes from the remote server. Click the Encrypted vs Non-Encrypted tab to display the percentage of local and remote responses for encrypted and unencrypted MAPI connections.

MAPI: Response Time Optimization

The MAPI Response Time Optimization chart compares the average time used for local and remote MAPI responses. The time units (microseconds, milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend upon the range. Click the Encrypted vs Non-Encrypted tab to display the average time used for local and remote responses for encrypted and unencrypted MAPI connections.

MAPI: Average Accelerated Client Sessions

The MAPI Average Accelerated Client Sessions pie chart displays the average number of encrypted sessions that are accelerated from different versions (2000, 2003, 2007, and 2010) of the Microsoft Outlook client. Click the Non-Encrypted tab to display the unencrypted session counts.

MAPI: Handled Traffic Pattern

For WAAS Versions 5.5.3 and later, MAPI Acceleration reports include the MAPI: Handled Traffic Pattern pie chart. As shown in Figure 15-7, this chart displays the percentage of three types of traffic:

• Total handled MAPI connections
• Total handled MAPI RPC-HTTP connections
• Total handled MAPI RPC-HTTPS connections

Figure 15-7 Example of MAPI: Handled Traffic Pattern Chart

MAPI: Connection Details

The MAPI Connection Details chart displays MAPI session connection statistics, showing the average number of active MAPI connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour). In addition to information on newly handled MAPI connections, optimized connections, handed-off connections, dropped connections, and optimized vs. non-encrypted MAPI connections, WAAS Version 5.5.3 and later also provides information on optimized TCP vs. RPC-HTTP(S) MAPI connections, as shown in Figure 15-8.

Figure 15-8 Example of MAPI: Connection Details Chart

Network File System (NFS) Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• NFS: Acceleration Bypass Reason
• NFS: Connection Details
• NFS: Effective WAN Capacity
• NFS: Estimated Time Savings
• NFS: Request Optimization
• NFS: Response Time Optimization
• NFS: Versions Detected

NFS: Acceleration Bypass Reason

The Network File System (NFS) Acceleration Bypass Reason pie chart displays the reasons because of which NFS traffic is not accelerated: unknown authentication flavor or unknown NFS version.

NFS: Connection Details

The NFS Connection Details chart displays the NFS session connection statistics, showing the average number of active NFS connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour). Click the Details tab to display the newly handled NFS connections, optimized connections, handed-off connections, and dropped connections.

NFS: Effective WAN Capacity

The NFS Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of NFS acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and NFS traffic is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic. Verify that monitoring is enabled for the File-System application.

NFS: Estimated Time Savings

The NFS Estimated Time Savings chart displays a graph of the estimated percentage of response time saved by the NFS accelerator.

NFS: Request Optimization

The NFS Request Optimization chart displays the percentage of local and remote NFS command responses. A local response is a response that is sent to the client from the local WAE. A remote response comes from the remote server.

NFS: Response Time Optimization

The NFS Response Time Optimization chart compares the average time used for local and remote NFS responses. The time units (milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend upon the range.

NFS: Versions Detected

The NFS Versions Detected pie chart displays the number of NFS messages detected for each NFS version (2, 3, and 4). The NFS accelerator works with NFS Version 3 traffic.

Server Message Block (SMB) Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• SMB: Average Response Time Saved
• SMB: Client Average Throughput
• SMB: Connection Details
• SMB: Effective WAN Capacity
• SMB: Request Optimization
• SMB: Response Time Savings
• SMB: Versions Detected

SMB: Average Response Time Saved

The Server Message Block (SMB) Average Response Time Saved chart displays the average response time saved for SMB responses. The time units (milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend upon the range.

SMB: Client Average Throughput

The SMB Client Average Throughput chart displays the average client throughput for the SMB accelerator.

SMB: Connection Details

The SMB Connection Details chart displays the SMB session connection statistics, showing the average number of active SMB connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour). Click the Details tab to display the newly handled SMB connections, optimized connections, handed-off connections, dropped connections, and signed connections.

SMB: Effective WAN Capacity

The SMB Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of SMB acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and SMB traffic is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic.

SMB: Request Optimization

The SMB Request Optimization chart displays the percentage of SMB command responses that use the following optimizations: read ahead, metadata, write, and other.

SMB: Response Time Savings

The SMB Response Time Savings chart displays a graph of the round-trip response time saved by the SMB accelerator due to the following optimizations, which are displayed in different colors: read ahead, metadata, Microsoft Office, async write, named pipe, print, and other. The time units (milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the left side depend on the range.

SMB: Versions Detected

The SMB Versions Detected pie chart displays the number of SMB messages detected for each SMB version:

• SMB v1.0 optimized, SMB v1.0 unoptimized, SMB v1.0 signed.
• SMB v2.0 optimized, SMB v2.0 unoptimized, SMBv 2.0 signed optimized and SMB v2.0 signed unoptimized.
• SMB v2.1 optimized, SMB v2.1 unoptimized, SMB v2.1 signed optimized, SMB v2.1 signed unoptimized.
• SMB v3.0 optimized, and SMB v3.0 unoptimized, SMB v3.0 signed, SMBv3.0 Encryption L4 optimized, SMBv3.0 Encryption L7 optimized, SMBv3.0 Encryption unoptimized
• SMBv3.02 optimized, SMB v3.02 unoptimized and SMB v3.02 signed, SMBv3.02 Encryption L4 optimized, SMBv3.02 Encryption L7 optimized, SMBv3.02 Encryption unoptimized

Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) Acceleration Charts

This section describes these charts:

• ICA: Client Versions
• ICA: Connection Details
• ICA: Effective WAN Capacity
• ICA: Unaccelerated Reasons

ICA: Client Versions

The Indepdendent Computing Architecture (ICA) Client Versions pie chart displays the number of ICA messages detected for each ICA version: online plugin 11.0, online plugin 11.2, online plugin 12.0, online plugin 12.1, Citrix Receiver 13.0, and other.

ICA: Connection Details

The ICA Connection Details chart displays the ICA session connection statistics, showing the average number of active ICA connections per device (at the device level, it shows the exact number for the last hour). Click the Details tab to display the newly handled ICA connections, optimized connections, handed-off connections, and dropped connections. Click the ICA vs ICA over SSL tab to display the the number of newly handled ICA connections and the number of newly handled ICA over SSL connections.

ICA: Effective WAN Capacity

The ICA Effective WAN Capacity chart displays the effective bandwidth capacity of the WAN link as a result of ICA acceleration, as a multiplier of its base capacity. The capacity data for all traffic and ICA traffic is shown.

Note If the chart has no data, monitoring may be disabled for the application definition that includes this type of traffic. Verify that monitoring is enabled for the Citrix application.

ICA: Unaccelerated Reasons

The ICA Unaccelerated Reasons chart displays the reasons that ICA traffic is bypassed: unrecognized protocol, unsupported client version, CGP session ID unknown, client on denied list, no resource, and other. Click the Dropped tab to display the reasons because of which ICA traffic is dropped: unsupported client version, I/O error, no resource, AO parsing error, maximum sessions reached, and other.

Akamai Connected Cache Charts

The WAAS Central Manager provides the following types of monitoring reports for Akamai Connected Cache:

• Response Time Savings
• Throughput Summary
• HTTP: Bandwidth Savings
• Top Sites
• Cache Statistics (Hits)

To access the following types of charts, choose Monitor > Caching > Akamai Connect.

Note Except for the Top Sites chart, you can view monitoring information at the device, network, location, or AppNav cluster levels.

Response Time Savings

As shown in Figure 15-9, the Response Time Savings chart displays the aggregated amount of time saved due to Akamai Connect caching, showing the response time saved as a percentage, and total response time saved, for cache hit transactions, in minutes.

Figure 15-9 Example of Response Time Savings Chart

The WAAS CM performs the following percentage calculations:

• Total response time saved
• Total adjusted download time
• Total response time without cache (total response time saved plus total adjusted download time)

Note Output from the show statistics accelerator http CLI command also displays information on response time, including the fields Total Time Saved and Percentage of Connection Time Saved. For more information on CLI commands, see the Cisco Wide Area Application Services Command Reference Guide.

Throughput Summary

The Throughput Summary chart displays information on web-optimized and original throughput. Depending in the tab you click for this chart, LAN-to-WAN (outbound) or WAN-to-LAN (inbound), throughput is displayed. The WAN-to-LAN report is the default report.

If you hover your mouse over a bar, the total optimized or average throughput, in KBps, for a given time range is displayed.

Figure 15-10 Example of Throughput Summary Chart

HTTP: Bandwidth Savings

The HTTP: Bandwidth Savings chart displays how much traffic, by percentage, is actually served by the Cache Engine (CE) that did not have to be fetched from the source.

When this information is combined with overall incoming traffic into the router from the WAN, it indicates how effective the cache is in boosting the WAN performance in terms of request-response latency. The combination of the incoming (WAN) traffic flow to the router, plus the WAN data offload incoming traffic provides a truer measure of the traffic flow the router’s clients (in aggregate) experience.

As shown in Figure 15-11:

• The bar graph is the absolute byte count for data served out of cache for the specified interval
• The line graph represents the percentage of total bytes requested that were served out of cache for the specified interval.

Figure 15-11 Example of HTTP Bandwith Savings Chart

Top Sites

The Top Sites chart displays the top sites being served by the Cache Engine (CE) in terms of hostname and traffic, in bar chart format. The Top Sites chart displays the following types of information:

• WAN Offload (Default report)—The top URLs by number of bytes served out of the cache, and as a result did not come over the WAN.
• Response Time Saving—The response time saved due to Akamai Connect caching. The time unit, (milliseconds, seconds, or minutes) at the bottom of the chart depend on the time range specified for the chart.
• Hit Count—The top URLs by number of cache hits.
• WAN Response—The top URLs by number of bytes served over the WAN.

Figure 15-12 Top Sites Chart Showing Response Time Saving by Site

Note Information in the Top Sites chart corresponds to the output for the show statistics accelerator http object-cache EXEC command. Top ten sites information is shown as top hosts information, in the Object cache top hosts ordered by: hit count, output section for 0 to 10 hosts. For more information on CLI commands, see the Cisco Wide Area Application Services Command Reference Guide.

Cache Statistics (Hits)

The Cache Statistics (Hits) chart displays information on cache hits or on data served from the cache, in bar chart format. For each type of Cache Statistics chart, you can specify a time frame of Last Hour, Last Day, Last Week, Last Month, or set a Custom one.

• The Cache Statistics Hits chart shows the percentage and the number of cache hits (in millions) over a specified time frame.
  
  If you hover your mouse over a data point, the total percentage of cache hits for that data point is displayed.
  
  If you hover your mouse over a bar, the number of hits, in millions, is displayed.
• The Cache Statistics Data Served from Cache chart shows the percentage and the amount of data served from cache (in MB) over a specified time frame.
  
  If you hover your mouse over a data point, the total percentage of cache hits for that data point is displayed.
  
  If you hover your mouse over a bar, the total amount, in MB, of data served from the cache, is displayed.

Figure 15-13 Example of Cache Statistics Hits Chart Showing a Detailed View of a Data Point

Connection Trend Charts

This section describes these charts:

• Optimized Connections Over Time
• Optimized vs Pass-Through Connections

Optimized Connections Over Time

The Optimized Connections Over Time chart displays the number of optimized connections over the selected time period. You can show the number of MAPI-reserved connections by checking the MAPI Reserved Connections check box. You can view the peak optimized connection values for all the data points in the chart by checking the Peak Connections check box. If you have opted to view the peak connections, the chart shows a combination of Optimized Connections as stacked legends and Peak Connections as overlaid lines for selected application/classifiers. In WAAS-XE devices, the Optimized Connections Over Time chart has only the Peak Connections option. You can customize the chart by choosing specific applications to be included. The default is all traffic.

The peak connection value is available for the following:

• LAST HOUR—The maximum value (optimized, pass-through connections counters) among the12 data samples available for the last hour.
• LAST DAY—The maximum value (optimized, pass-through connection counters) among the 12 data samples for each hour. For example, if the optimized connection counter values are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120 for an hour, the peak optimized connection value would be 120.

This chart is available only when a specific WAAS device is selected and can be added only to the Connection Trend report.

Optimized vs Pass-Through Connections

The Optimized vs Pass-Through Connections chart displays the total number of optimized and pass-through connections on a device or on all devices in a location. You can show the device connection limit, which is the maximum number of connections a device can support, by checking the Device Connection Limit check box. This option is available only at the device level. At the Location level, by default, the chart displays only the top five devices series based on the maximum connection limit usage. You can select the devices of your choice from the chart Settings page. The chart in the PDF report displays a maximum of 10 series.

You can view the peak pass-through connection values for all the data points in the chart by checking the Peak Connections check box.

Note This chart is available only when a specific WAAS device or location is selected, and can be added only to the Connection Trend report.

Formula:

Pass-Through Connections for a Device = Total Pass-Through Connections for all applications

Optimized Connections for a Device = Total Optimized Connections for all applications

Device Connections limit usage % = 100 * Average Optimized connections / Device connection Limit

where,

Average Optimized connections = Sum of Optimized Connections / No. of samples

AppNav Charts

This section describes these charts:

• Total AppNav Traffic
• AppNav Policies
• Top 10 AppNav Policies
• Top 10 WAAS Node Group Distribution
• WAAS Node Group Distribution
• Pass-Through Reasons
• Top 10 Pass-Through Reasons

Total AppNav Traffic

The Total AppNav Traffic chart displays the total amount of distributed and pass-through traffic processed by the AppNav Cluster or ANC device. The units at the left side depend upon the range.

AppNav Policies

The AppNav Policies chart displays a graph of the amount of intercepted, distributed, or pass-through traffic processed by the AppNav Cluster (ANC) or ANC device for each policy rule, depending on which tab you select. The units at the left side depend upon the range.

From the Show Details For drop-down list, select a policy rule for viewing.

Top 10 AppNav Policies

The Top 10 AppNav Policies pie chart displays the amount of intercepted, distributed, or pass-through traffic processed by the AppNav Cluster or ANC device for the top nine policy rules with the most traffic, depending on which tab you select. Traffic for all other policy rules is grouped together into a tenth category named Other Traffic (shown only if it totals at least 0.1 percent of all traffic).

From the Show Details For drop-down list, select a policy rule for viewing.

Top 10 WAAS Node Group Distribution

The Top 10 WAAS Node Group (WNG) Distribution pie chart displays the top nine WNGs to which traffic is distributed. Traffic for all other WNGs is grouped together into a tenth category named Other Traffic (shown only if it totals at least 0.1 percent of all traffic).

From the Show Details For drop-down list, select a WNG whose individual Cisco WAAS node details you want to view.

WAAS Node Group Distribution

The WAAS Node Group Distribution chart displays a graph of the amount of traffic distributed to each WNG. The units at the left side depend upon the range.

From the Show Details For drop-down list, select a WNG whose individual Cisco WAAS node details you want to view.

Pass-Through Reasons

The Pass-Through Reasons chart displays a graph of the amount of pass-through traffic for each of the pass-through reasons. The units at the left side depend upon the range.

From the Show Details For drop-down list, select a reason whose details you want to view.

Top 10 Pass-Through Reasons

The Top 10 Pass-Through Reasons pie chart displays the top nine reasons because of which traffic is passed through. Traffic for all other reasons is grouped together into a tenth category named Other Traffic (shown only if it totals at least 0.1 percent of all traffic).

From the Show Details For drop-down list, select a reason whose details you want to view.

Platform Charts

This section describes these charts:

• CPU Utilization
• Disk Utilization

CPU Utilization

The CPU Utilization chart displays the percentage of CPU utilization for a device. This chart is available only when a specific WAAS device is selected. This chart can be added only to the Monitor > Reports > Reports Central > Resource Utilization report page.

Disk Utilization

The Disk Utilization chart displays the percentage of disk utilization for a device. This chart is available only when a specific WAAS device is selected. This chart can be added only to the Monitor > Reports > Reports Central > Resource Utilization report page.

Traffic Summary Table

This table is called the Network Traffic Summary, Device Traffic Summary, or Location Traffic Summary, depending on the context, and it displays a summary of traffic.

At the system and location levels, each row in the table displays the total traffic information for each device that is registered to the corresponding Central Manager or is in a particular location. At the device level, each row in the table displays the total traffic information for each application defined on the device. The data is described in Table 15-4 .

Network Application Traffic Details Table

The Network Application Traffic Details table is available at the system level and displays the total traffic information for each application. The data is the same as described in Table 15-4 (except there is no Device column in this table).

HTTP Acceleration Statistics Table

The HTTP Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays HTTP acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-5 .

HTTPS Acceleration Statistics Table

The HTTPS Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays HTTPS acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-6 .

ICA Acceleration Statistics Table

The ICA Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays ICA acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-7 .

MAPI Acceleration Statistics Table

The MAPI Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays MAPI acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-8 .

NFS Acceleration Statistics Table

The NFS Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays NFS acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-9 .

SMB Acceleration Statistics Table

The SMB Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays SMB acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-10 .

SSL Acceleration Statistics Table

The SSL Acceleration Statistics table is available at the system and device levels and displays SSL acceleration details. The data is described in Table 15-11 .

Predefined Reports Available by WAAS Level

This section contains the following tables:

• Table 15-12 , “Predefined Reports Available at System, AppNav Cluster, Location, and Device Level”
• Table 15-13 , “Predefined Reports Available at Specified Levels”

Table 15-12 shows the predefined reports available at the WAAS system level, the AppNav Cluster level, the location level, and the device level.

Table 15-12 Predefined Reports Available at System, AppNav Cluster, Location, and Device Level

Table 15-13 shows the predefined reports available at specified WAAS levels.

Table 15-13 Predefined Reports Available at Specified Levels

Note In a WAAS network where there are 1000 or more WAEs, there may be a delay of up to 90 seconds to redisplay the table when you click a table column to sort a system-level report table. You may experience a similar delay when you click the Print icon in the taskbar before you see the report.

Location-Level Reports

Location-level reports aggregate data from all the WAEs present in a particular location. For more information about locations, see Working with Device Locations in Chapter 3, “Using Device Groups and Device Locations.”

To view a location-level report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Locations > location-name.

Step 2 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Monitor and choose the report from the Optimization or Acceleration categories.

When scheduling any report, you can also select one or more locations; the report will include data from all the devices within the selected locations. For more information, see Scheduling a Report.

The maximum number of devices supported in a location-level report is 25 by default. This number is configurable up to 250 by the System.monitoring.maxDevicePerLocation system property. For more information, see Modifying the Default System Configuration Properties in Chapter 10, “Configuring Other System Settings.”

TCP Summary Report

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Summary report displays a summary of all traffic. The following charts and tables are included:

• Traffic Summary
• Effective WAN Capacity
• Traffic Volume and Reduction
• Compression Summary
• Traffic Summary Over Time
• Compression Summary Over Time
• Throughput Summary (included only at the device and location levels)
• Traffic Summary Table

HTTP Acceleration Report

The HTTP Acceleration report displays the HTTP acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• HTTP: Estimated Time Savings
• HTTP: Effective WAN Capacity
• HTTP: Connection Details
• HTTP: Response Time Savings
• HTTP: Optimization Count
• HTTP: Optimization Techniques
• HTTP Acceleration Statistics Table

The WAAS Central Manager provides monitoring information on the following types of caching: Basic, Standard, Advanced, Bypass, and Connected Cache. Except for the Top Sites chart, you can view monitoring information at the device, network, location, or AppNav cluster levels. The following charts are included:

• Akamai Connected Cache Charts

– Cache Statistics (Hits)

– Throughput Summary

– HTTP: Bandwidth Savings

– Top Sites

HTTPS Acceleration Report

The HTTPS Acceleration report displays the HTTPS acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• HTTPS: Estimated Time Savings
• HTTPS: Effective WAN Capacity
• HTTPS: Connection Details
• HTTPS: Response Time Savings
• HTTPS: Optimization Count
• HTTPS: Optimization Techniques
• HTTPS Acceleration Statistics Table

SSL Acceleration Report

The SSL Acceleration report displays the SSL acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• SSL: Connection Details
• SSL: Effective WAN Capacity
• SSL: Acceleration Bypass Reason
• SSL Acceleration Statistics Table

MAPI Acceleration Report

The MAPI Acceleration report displays the MAPI acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• MAPI: Average Response Time Saved
• MAPI: Effective WAN Capacity
• MAPI: Connection Details
• MAPI: Request Optimization
• MAPI: Response Time Optimization
• MAPI: Average Accelerated Client Sessions
• MAPI: Acceleration Bypass Reason
• MAPI Acceleration Statistics Table

NFS Acceleration Report

The NFS Acceleration report displays the NFS acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• NFS: Estimated Time Savings
• NFS: Effective WAN Capacity
• NFS: Connection Details
• NFS: Request Optimization
• NFS: Response Time Optimization
• NFS: Versions Detected
• NFS: Acceleration Bypass Reason
• NFS Acceleration Statistics Table

SMB Acceleration Report

The SMB Acceleration report displays the SMB acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• SMB: Average Response Time Saved
• SMB: Effective WAN Capacity
• SMB: Connection Details
• SMB: Request Optimization
• SMB: Response Time Savings
• SMB: Client Average Throughput
• SMB: Versions Detected
• SMB Acceleration Statistics Table

ICA Acceleration Report

The ICA Acceleration report displays the ICA acceleration statistics. The following charts and tables are included:

• ICA: Effective WAN Capacity
• ICA: Connection Details
• ICA: Client Versions
• ICA: Unaccelerated Reasons
• ICA Acceleration Statistics Table

Note The ICA charts in WAAS Version 5.0 and later are different from those used in Version 4.5. If you are viewing the data from a Version 4.5 WAAS device, the charts appear empty due to the different data that the device is collecting. The ICA data for Version 4.5 WAAS devices is available in the system-level TCP Summary Report. For more information, see TCP Summary Report.

Summary Report

The Summary Report is a predefined report that can be used to monitor system operation. It is available at the system level. This report displays the following charts and tables by default:

• Traffic Summary
• Effective WAN Capacity
• Traffic Summary Over Time
• Traffic Volume and Reduction
• Compression Summary
• Compression Summary Over Time
• HTTP: Estimated Time Savings
• HTTP: Effective WAN Capacity
• MAPI: Effective WAN Capacity
• SSL: Effective WAN Capacity
• MAPI: Average Response Time Saved
• Network Application Traffic Details Table

The Summary Report can be customized to display the charts that you require. Use the Customize taskbar icon to select the charts that you want to be displayed in this report. Only 12 charts can be displayed in the report.

Topology Report

The Topology report at the system level displays a topology map that shows a graphical representation of all the connections between the WAAS devices.

The topology map uses blue squares to show connections between devices. Use the legend to the right of the grid to associate the device name with the number that appears at the top of the grid. Use the drop-down lists at the top of the window to perform the following tasks:

• Display connections between your various locations instead of between devices.
• Sort the grid by the number of connections instead of by device name.

Click the View icon next to the WAE to view a list of peer devices for a specific WAE. The Peer List window appears, which is the same as the device level Topology report.

At the device level, the Topology report lists all the peer devices connected to a specific WAE so that you can see the relationship between devices in your WAAS network. The Peer List window displays information about each peer device involved in optimized connections with this WAE. To go to the system level Topology report, click the Topology icon in the taskbar.

If a peer device is not registered with the WAAS Central Manager, the message Unknown, this peer is not being managed by CM is displayed for the name and Unknown is displayed for the IP address.

Note The WAAS Central Manager device does not have any peers because it does not participate with any WAEs to optimize traffic. For this reason, the topology feature is not available on the WAAS Central Manager device.

Connection Trend Report

The Connection Trend Report displays the connection trends of applications on a device. The following charts are included:

• Optimized Connections Over Time
• Optimized vs Pass-Through Connections

Connections Statistics Report

The Connections Statistics report displays a Connections Statistics table for the device. The table displays all the TCP connections handled by the device and corresponds to the show statistics connection EXEC mode command in WAE and the show waas connection brief command in WAAS Express.

You can choose to display a subset of connections identified by IP address and port by entering values in the Source/Destination IP Address and Source/Destination Port fields above the table and clicking Submit. To see the Connection Start Time for the active connections in appropriate time zones, you can select the time zone from the available values of CM Local Time, Device Local Time and UTC from the Show Connection Start Time drop-down list.

Note In case of a clock or timezone change in the WAE, the exact time for device timezone is reflected after the configuration synchronization cycles.

The Connection Statistics table displays the following information about each connection:

• Source IP address and port.
• Destination IP address and port.
• Peer ID—Hostname of the peer device.
• Applied Policy/Bypass Reason—Displays icons representing the applied optimization policies, including TFO, DRE, LZ, and an application accelerator, respectively. (Hover your mouse over the icon to see its meaning.) If the connection is not optimized, the bypass reason is shown.
• Connection Start Time—Date and time at which the connection was started.
• Open Duration—Number of hours, minutes, and seconds that the connection has been open.
• Total number of original bytes.
• Total number of optimized bytes.
• Percentage of compression.
• Class map name—If no class map exists for the connection, this column contains a dash. To create a class map for this connection, click the radio button at the left of the row and then click the Create Class-Map taskbar icon to display the Optimization Class-Map pane. For details on creating a class map and match conditions, see Chapter 12, “Configuring Application Acceleration”.

Note If the WAE is inheriting policies from a device group, the Create Class-Map button is dimmed, to prevent a user from unknowingly overriding device group policies. To create a class map, you must first override the device group policy page and then return to the Connection Statistics report.

The data in the Connections Statistics table is retrieved from the device once when you view the table for the first time.

From the Connections Statistics table, you can perform the following tasks:

• Apply filter settings to display particular connections based on specific criteria, by choosing Quick Filter from the Show drop-list in the taskbar.
• Refresh the table by clicking the Refresh taskbar icon.
• Export the table to a spreadsheet by clicking the Export taskbar icon.
• View connection details by clicking the Details icon next to the connection entry.

The Connection Details window contains connection addresses, port information, policy information, and traffic statistics. It also displays graphs that plot real-time traffic statistics and are refreshed every two seconds.

Note In the Connection Details window, if the value for Percentage Compression is negative, the Percentage Compression and Effective Capacity values do not appear.

In some cases, the Central Manager is not able to fetch the Connections Statistics page details at the WAE device level. This happens when the WAE uses internal IP for management purpose with the Central Manager and external IP (NAT) for RPC or registration purpose with the WAAS Central Manager, and if the internal IP not reachable from the WAAS Central Manager.

Resource Utilization Report

The Resource Utilization report displays the following charts:

• CPU Utilization
• Disk Utilization

Disks Report

The Disks Report displays physical and logical disk information.

The report window displays the following information about each disk:

• Physical disk information, including the disk name, serial number, and disk size.
• Present status. The Present field will show either Yes if the disk is present or Not Applicable if the disk is administratively shut down.
• Operational status—NORMAL, REBUILD, BAD, UNKNOWN, or Online.
• Administrative status—ENABLED or DISABLED. When the Administrative Status field shows DISABLED, the Present field will show Not Applicable.
• Current and future disk encryption status.
• RAID level. For RAID-5 devices, the Disk Information window includes the RAID device name, RAID status, and RAID device size.
• Error information, if any errors are detected.

From this window, you can save all disk information details to an Excel spreadsheet by clicking the Export Table icon in the taskbar.

AppNav Report

The AppNav report displays AppNav flow distribution information. This report is available at the AppNav Cluster level, where it shows statistics for the whole AppNav Cluster, and at the device level for AppNav Controllers (ANCs), where it shows statistics for a single ANC.

The following charts and tables are included:

• Total AppNav Traffic
• AppNav Policies
• Top 10 AppNav Policies
• Top 10 WAAS Node Group Distribution
• WAAS Node Group Distribution
• Pass-Through Reasons
• Top 10 Pass-Through Reasons

At the AppNav Cluster level, the following additional controls appear in the taskbar:

• The Scope drop-down list allows you to choose to display data for the whole cluster or for an individual ANC.
• The AppNav Policy Rule drop-down list allows you to choose the AppNav policy for which data is displayed (shown for WAAS appliance AppNav clusters only.)
• The Context drop-down list allows you to choose the AppNav context (or all contexts) for which data is displayed (shown for AppNav-XE clusters only.)

Note At the AppNav Cluster level, the charts may not show data if the configuration on all ANCs in the cluster does not match. To resolve this situation, choose AppNav Clusters > cluster-name from the Central Manager menu and click the taskbar icon named Force Settings on all Devices in a Group. After about 15 minutes, the AppNav charts will display data.

Exported Reports

Using the spreadsheet icon in the Central Manager taskbar, you can export chart values to a CSV file.

Table 15-14 provides descriptions of report column headings for exported reports. Because there are many report column headings, the table is divided into categories by types of traffic, in alphabetical order. For these heading descriptions, a time specification (for example, milliseconds) is not noted, as the time specification may change depending on the time period specified for the report (for example, hour or week).

week).

• Akamai Connected Cache
• Akamai Connected Cache Top Sites
• Application, Time, and Time Saved
• Cache Control Header and Cache
• Connections: Active, Dropped, Incomplete, Pending
• Connections: Handled, Optimized, Prepositioned
• Connections: Idle, Reused, Timeout
• Connections: Handoffs, Pass Through, Piped Through
• DRE and LZ Compression
• Locally Served and Remotely Served
• Round Trip Time (RTT)
• Session
• Sharepoint
• Throughput
• Transactions

Table 15-14 Exported Report Column Headings

Creating a Custom Report

A report consists of up to eight charts and tables. The system and device dashboard displays are examples of predefined reports, along with the other reports available in the Monitor menu.

Reports can be created only at the system level, not at the device level.

To create a custom report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Monitor > Reports > Reports Central.

Step 2 Click the Create taskbar icon. The Create Report pane appears, as shown in Figure 15-14.

Figure 15-14 Create Report Pane

Step 3 In the Name field, enter a name for the report. The maximum is 64 characters. Only numerals, letters, spaces, periods, hyphens, and underscores are allowed.

Step 4 (Optional) In the Description field, enter a description of the report.

Step 5 In the list at the left side of the pane, check the check box next to each chart and table that you want to be displayed in the report. See WAAS Chart Descriptions for a description of the charts.

Expand the categories by clicking the small triangle next to the category name. See a preview and description of a chart by clicking the chart name. Tables are listed in the last category, Statistics Details.

Step 6 Click OK.

Step 7 (Optional) Customize any of the chart settings as follows:

a. Display the report by clicking the report name in the Report Templates table.

b. You can customize report settings, such as the time frame and the time zone, as described in Customizing a Dashboard or Report.

c. Click the Edit icon in the upper left of a chart to customize the chart settings. For more information, see Configuring Chart Settings.

d. Click OK.

Repeat the steps for each chart you want to customize.

Another way in which you can create a report is to copy a similar report that already exists and modify it into a new report. To copy a report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Monitor > Reports > Reports Central.

Step 2 Check the box next to the report that you want to copy.

Step 3 Click the Copy taskbar icon. The copy report window appears.

Step 4 In the Name field, enter a name for the report.

Step 5 (Optional) In the Description field, enter a description of the report.

Step 6 Click OK.

The report is added to the Reports table.

Viewing and Editing a Report

To view or edit a report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Monitor > Reports > Reports Central.

Step 2 Click the name of the report that you want to view or edit.

You can filter the list by choosing Quick Filter from the Show drop-down list and entering filter criteria.

Step 3 To change any of the charts or tables in the report, use the standard chart editing methods, as described in Customizing a Dashboard or Report.

Step 4 Click Save to save the report, or click Save As to save the report under a different name.

To delete a report from the Reports table, check the check box next to the corresponding report and click the Delete taskbar icon.

Admin users can view, edit, and delete reports created by all users and can view and edit predefined reports. Nonadmin users can view, edit, and delete only reports created by themselves, and can view and edit predefined reports.

Scheduling a Report

You can schedule reports to be generated once or periodically, such as daily, weekly, or monthly. When a scheduled report is generated, a copy of the report can be emailed.

Note You cannot delete a scheduled custom report after you have scheduled it and it is in pending status. You can delete a report only after it has been generated.

To schedule a report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Monitor > Reports > Reports Central.

Step 2 Check the check box next to the report that you want to schedule.

Step 3 Click the Schedule icon in the taskbar. The scheduling window appears, as shown in Figure 15-15.

Figure 15-15 Scheduling a Report

Step 4 In the Date field, enter the schedule date in the format DD/MM/YYYY, or click the calendar icon to display a calendar from which to choose the date.

Step 5 In the Hours drop-down list, choose the hours. The time represents the local time at the WAAS Central Manager.

Step 6 In the Minutes drop-down list, choose the minutes. The time represents the local time at the WAAS Central Manager.

Step 7 In the Frequency drop-down list, choose the report frequency (Once, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly).

Step 8 In the No. of Reports field, enter the number of times a reoccurring report is to be generated. You can schedule it to be generated for up to 1825 times. After being generated the specified number of times, the report is no longer generated.

Step 9 Select the Email PDF or Email CSV check box to receive the report in the format of your choice.

Step 10 In the Email Id field (enabled only when the Email PDF or Email CSV check box is checked), enter the e-mail addresses of the report recipients, separated by commas.

Step 11 In the Email Subject field, enter the subject of the email message.

Step 12 From the Select drop-down list, choose an option (Device(s), DeviceGroup, Cluster, or Location) to display a list of the chosen entities.

Step 13 In the Select entity area, choose the devices that are to be included in the statistics for the report. Check the check box next to each device, device group, cluster, or location that you want to include.

To locate an entity in a long list, choose Quick Filter from the Show drop-down list and enter the complete or partial entity name in the field above the list. The search is case sensitive.

Step 14 Click OK.

Step 15 Configure the e-mail server settings for e-mail notification when reports are generated. For more information, see Configuring the E-mail Notification Server in Chapter 10, “Configuring Other System Settings.”

Note In a WAAS network where there are 1000 or more WAEs, a scheduled report might take up to 4 minutes to generate. And if you schedule more than one report at the same time, the reports will be generated with a delay of up to 20 minutes, depending on the number of reports and devices.

Viewing or Deleting a Scheduled Report

To view or delete a scheduled report, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAAS Central Manager menu, choose Monitor > Reports > Reports Central.

The lower part of the Reports window lists the completed and pending scheduled reports, depending on the tab you choose. (You can use the Show filter above the table to filter the reports that are displayed.)

Step 2 (Optional) To view a completed report instance in the Completed Reports tab, click the Completed link in the Status column.

Note For each completed instance of a scheduled report, the Frequency column shows Once and the Completed Time shows the date and time that the report was generated.

Step 3 (Optional) If you want to view a list of pending reports, click the Pending Reports tab.

Step 4 (Optional) If you want to delete a report in either the Completed Reports or Pending Reports tabs, check the box next to one or more report instances that you want to delete and click the Delete taskbar icon.

WAAS stores the 10 most recently completed or failed report instances for each custom report. This number is configurable by the System.monitoring.maxReports system property. For details on changing this property, see Modifying the Default System Configuration Properties in Chapter 10, “Configuring Other System Settings.”

Admin users can view reports scheduled by all users or the name of the report creator. Nonadmin users can view only reports scheduled by themselves.

Any changes to predefined report settings are stored separately for individual users. That is, if one user changes a predefined scheduled report, only that user sees the changes, and other users (including admin users) continue to see the report with default settings.

Reports scheduled by an external user are deleted if the maximum limit of days without a login passes and the user is deleted. For more information, see the cdm.remoteuser.deletionDaysLimit system configuration property in Chapter10, “Configuring Other System Settings”

Note You cannot delete a scheduled custom report after you have scheduled it and it is in pending status. You can delete a report only after it has been generated.

Configuring Flowing Monitoring with NetQoS

This section has the following topics:

• About Flow Monitoring with NetQos
• Configuration Considerations for Flow Monitoring with NetQoS
• Procedure for Configuring Flow Monitoring with NetQos
• Example: Using NetQoS for Flow Monitoring

About Flow Monitoring with NetQos

The NetQoS monitoring application can interoperate with the WAAS software to provide flow monitoring. To integrate this application with the WAAS software, configure the NetQoS FlowAgent module on the WAE devices. The NetQoS FlowAgent module on the WAE collects important metrics of packet flows, which are then sent across the network to the NetQoS SuperAgent. This monitoring agent analyzes the data and generates reports. For this feature to work, additional configuration is required on the NetQoS FlowAgent. (See the Example: Using NetQoS for Flow Monitoring.)

The monitoring agent comprises two modules: the console (or host) and the collector. The WAE initiates two types of connections to these two monitoring agent modules: a temporary connection to the console and a persistent connection to the collector.

Configuration Considerations for Flow Monitoring with NetQoS

Consider the following when you configure flow monitoring with NetQoS:

• Configure the console IP address on the WAE by entering the flow monitor tcpstat-v1 host configuration mode command in either the WAE CLI or through the Central Manager GUI. This temporary connection is referred to as the control connection.
• The control connection uses TCP port 7878. Its purpose is to obtain the IP address and port number of the collector to which the WAE is assigned.
• The WAE also pulls the configuration information regarding which servers are to be monitored over the control connection. After the WAE obtains the IP address and port number of the collector, the WAE opens a persistent connection to the collector. Collected summary data for the servers that are being monitored is sent over this persistent connection.
• You can place the console (or host) module and the collector module on a single device or on separate devices. These connections are independent of one another. Failure of one connection does not cause the failure of the other connection.
• You can view the state of these connections and various operation statistics display with the show statistics flow monitor tcpstat-v1 EXEC mode command. Connection errors and data transfer errors trigger alarms on the WAE and in the Central Manager GUI. For information on flow monitoring alarms, see Troubleshooting Flow Monitoring Information.
• To display debug information, use the debug flow monitor tcpstat-v1 EXEC mode command.

Procedure for Configuring Flow Monitoring with NetQos

To configure NetQoS flow monitoring on your WAEs using the Central Manager GUI, follow these steps:

Step 1 Create a new device group for configuring flow monitoring on multiple devices by choosing Device Groups > device-group-name > Create New Device Group.

a. When you create a device group, check the Automatically assign all newly activated devices to this group check box to enable this option.

b. Add your existing WAE devices to this new device group.

Step 2 In the Device Group listing window, click the Edit icon next to the name of the flow monitoring configuration device group that you want to configure.

Step 3 Choose Configure > Monitoring > Flow Monitor. The Flow Monitor Settings for Device Group window appears.

Step 4 In the Destination IP Address field, enter the IP address of the monitoring agent console.

This configuration allows the WAE to establish a temporary connection (a control connection) to the console for the purpose of obtaining the IP address of the collector device. You must configure the collector IP address information from the console device. (See the configuration documentation for the NetQoS flow monitoring application software.)

Step 5 Check the Enable Flow Monitor check box.

Step 6 Click Submit to apply the settings to the devices in this device group.

To configure NetQoS flow monitoring on the WAE using the CLI, follow these steps:

Step 1 Register the WAE with the IP address of the monitoring agent console.

This configuration allows the WAE to establish a temporary connection (a control connection) to the console (or host) for the purpose of obtaining the IP address of the collector device. You must configure the collector IP address information from the console device. (See the configuration documentation for the NetQoS flow monitoring application software.)

Step 2 Enable flow monitoring on the WAE appliance.

Step 3 Check the configuration by using the show running-config EXEC command.

Example: Using NetQoS for Flow Monitoring

NetQoS integrates with the WAAS software by running the NetQoS FlowAgent on WAE devices. FlowAgent is a software module developed by NetQoS that resides on a WAE appliance. The FlowAgent collects metrics about the packet flows, which are then sent across the network to a NetQoS SuperAgent. The SuperAgent measures the round-trip times, server response times, and data transfer times, and then analyzes the data and generates reports.

Note When you use flow monitoring with the NetQoS SuperAgent, the flow monitor on the WAE captures optimized traffic only.

To configure flow monitoring with NetQoS, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the WAE CLI or Central Manager GUI, enter the SuperAgent Master Console IP address in the Destination IP Address field on your WAE appliances.

If you are configuring multiple WAAS devices through a device group, wait for the configuration to propagate to all the devices in the device list.

Step 2 From the NetQoS SuperAgent console, assign a WAE to a SuperAgent Aggregator (known as the collector in WAAS terminology) and configure the NetQoS networks, servers, and applications entities.

Note For information about using the NetQoS SuperAgent Master Console and configuring NetQoS SuperAgent entities, go to http://support.ca.com

Configuring Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9

This section has the following topics:

• About Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9
• Configuration Considerations for Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9
• Procedure for Configuring Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9
• Disabling NetFlow v9
• NetFlow v9 Exported Fields
• NetFlow v9 Pass-Through Reasons

About Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9

NetFlow v9 is a template-based protocol developed by Cisco Systems to collect IP traffic information. The NetFlow v9 record format consists of a packet header followed by a template flowset of data flowset. A template flowset contains a description of the fields to be sent through in the data flowset. A data flowset is a collection of the data records containing flow information that is put into an export packet.

WAAS v5.3.1 and later provide the following features for Netflow v9:

• Unlike NetFlow v5, which used a fixed format, NetFlow v9 utilizes a template format. All WAAS optimization engines can use this template format to export data to collectors such as Cisco Prime and Solarwinds.
• The template format allows new features to be quickly added to NetFlow v9.
• Templates are verified every few minutes for changes, and sent out hourly to provide collectors with field information for data records.
• NetFlow v9 uses WAAS transaction log information and adds an exporter code to allow data to be sent to external devices.
• NetFlow v9 can be used on all WAAS optimization engines; it is not used with WAAS AppNav.
• By default, all WAAS class maps are monitored. If you would like to have specific class maps to not be monitored, see Disabling NetFlow v9.

Configuration Considerations for Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9

To configure NetFlow v9 on your WAEs with either the Central Manager GUI or the CLI, configure four monitoring areas:

• Flow Record—Contains the WAAS-specific flow information you want to send to the collector.
• Flow Exporter—Contains the destination details for the exported information, and the format for this information.
• Flow Monitor—Specifies which flow records are going to which flow exporter.
• Class Map—For WAAS v5.3.1 and above, monitors are enabled globally on all class map policies by default. If you do not want a particular device monitored, manually disable monitoring for that device.

Procedure for Configuring Flow Monitoring with NetFlow v9

To configure NetFlow v9 flow monitoring on the WAE using the CLI, follow these steps:

Step 1 Use the following command to create a flow record to configure which fields to collect as part of Netflow export:

Table 15-15 Collection Parameters

Step 2 Use the following command to create the flow exporter, which includes the destination IP address and port for the Netflow:

Step 3 Use the following command to create the flow monitor and associate the flow record with the flow exporter:

Disabling NetFlow v9

By default, flow monitoring is enabled on all devices. Use the following command to disable monitoring for a particular class:

NetFlow v9 Exported Fields

In Netflow v9, there are several fields that can be provided to the Netflow collector. The following table provides some examples of these fields:

Table 15-16 Netflow v9 Exported Fields

NetFlow v9 Pass-Through Reasons

Pass-Through reasons are sent to the collector. Table 15-17 shows pass-through numbers and associated reasons.

Table 15-17 Pass-Through Number and Pass-Through Reason

Troubleshooting Flow Monitoring Information

This section has the following topics:

• Alarms for Flow Monitoring
• Commands Used to Troubleshoot Flow Monitoring

Alarms for Flow Monitoring

Table 15-18 shows the four different alarms that may be raised when errors occur with flow monitoring.

Table 15-18 Alarms for Flow Monitoring

Commands Used to Troubleshoot Flow Monitoring

Table 15-19 shows the commands used to troubleshoot flow monitoring.

Table 15-19 Commands Used to Troubleshoot Flow Monitoring