In data center networking architecture, three fundamental components form the core of a data center network — the network, server, and storage infrastructure. These components must fit and work together to deliver faster and more reliable data center networking services.
To ensure high performance of data center networks and assure service delivery per the service level agreements (SLA), an integral part of data center operations are data center networking solutions, i.e., a comprehensive data center infrastructure monitoring solution (DCIM). These data center networking solutions help a NOC/ network data center technician to track, monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot network devices, physical and virtual servers, and storage devices.
A data center networking in computer networks is a complex arrangement of network devices such as routers, switches, interfaces, etc., that interconnects the various computing and storage units in a data center's resource pool to ensure a high level of performance.
In addition, increased network usage and migration of businesses towards data center services present a unique challenge where it is important to deploy a data center network manager (DCNM)/ DCIM software such as ManageEngine OpManager for effective data center network management. Data center network infrastructure management with OpManager allows you to manage, upgrade, and monitor your data center in a networking platform for optimal service delivery with complete visibility into data center networking configuration and individual networking data center components and dependencies.
In a data center network, the following are some of the important areas that need to be monitored regularly:
ManageEngine OpManager's data center networking solution provides comprehensive network health and availability monitoring to ensure peak performance round-the-clock for your data center network.
It provides complete visibility into all of your network devices and associated interfaces/ ports and WAN links using Cisco IP SLA. It has in-built data center network monitoring tools that provide real-time dashboards and a multi-level threshold-based alerting system to instantly identify and resolve network issues based on early indications before it causes a network outage.
In data center networking, it is also essential to analyze bandwidth usage patterns, track application growth and a number of connections, and control excess bandwidth consumption. This helps identify and allocate optimal bandwidth to avoid wasting it or causing traffic congestion that hinders network performance.
Datacenter networking with OpManager enables you to monitor over 230 different interface types out-of-the-box to track interface performance using metrics such as traffic speed, errors, discards, packet loss, etc., with advanced bandwidth and flow analysis. You can also use the in-built Netflow module to get further insights and actions on capacity planning, anomaly detection, traffic shaping using ACLs, etc.
Network configuration management is a process that is carried out throughout the entire life cycle of an asset in the data center network (DCN) and a simple misconfiguration due to human error can cause an outage, loss of revenue, and failure to meet service level agreements (SLA) might incur legal repercussions.
ManageEngine OpManager, a reliable data center networking software, along with its in-built network configuration module provides comprehensive network device life-cycle and data center networking configuration management. It handles initial configuration during device additions, change management with authorization and configuration backups, bulk or complex operations via configlets with scheduling, and enables you to meet various compliance requirements such as PCI DSS, Sox, HIPAA, etc.
At the heart of all data center operations, is a platform of computing resources that serve as a backbone for various mission-critical enterprise or business applications and services. This includes a variety of servers such as database servers, core application servers, caching servers, web servers, and virtualization such as VMware, Hyper V, and Xen environments.
OpManager's data center networking solution provides hardware-agnostic real-time-server monitoring to track server health and availability, server system resources (CPU, memory, disk usage, I/O, processes, etc.), data loss, server responsiveness, server capacity, and user load. It also helps prevent server issues proactively with the help of multi-level thresholds and instant notifications via email or SMS.
Explore more of OpManager's data center server monitoring capabilities:
In addition to these, you can also explore individual monitoring capabilities for data center networking virtualization via VMware, Hyper V, and Xen or Hyperconverged Infrastructures (HCI).
The world is producing much more data than it was just a decade ago. A data center network hence has to commission extensive network storage architecture to accommodate the massive in-flow of data from data-intensive applications such as analytics or data processing tools. It also emphasizes the need to monitor and manage the data center network storage infrastructure with dedicated data center network storage solutions. This ensures that the applications or services that are hosted by businesses or enterprises function without interruptions due to storage failure.
OpManager's data center management provides in-depth network storage monitoring for Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAIDs), Tape Libraries in Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Fiber Channel (FC) or Storage Area Network (SAN) switches with topological storage visualization and storage capacity forecasting based on machine learning algorithms.
Monitoring your storage devices with OpManager's data center networking solution provides increased visibility into your storage environment and avoids downtime related to storage issues. It is also a comprehensive solution to monitor your entire IT infrastructure saving costs on any independent storage solutions. This is unlike other networking data center solutions that miss out on key features for effective data center infrastructure management (DCIM).
Learn more about data center storage components here:
RAIDs, Tape Library, Fabric switches
In data center networking, visualizing your data center's network, server, and storage infrastructure with a potent data center networking tool, plays a key role in identifying network issues and performance bottlenecks. It provides a holistic view of your entire data center network architecture, allowing you to approach network troubleshooting or capacity additions fully informed of all dependencies.
ManageEngine OpManager's data center networking capabilities enable you to visualize all the components in your data center network to pinpoint network issues or outages and locate performance degradation at a glance. You can quickly drill down to the root cause of a network issue and troubleshoot it with in-built Workflow automation and network troubleshooting tools.
Some of the features it offers include business views, map views, 3D rack and floor views, and layer 2 maps.
Business Views: This view allows visualization of network devices, servers, and storage that belong to a particular business. It shows the health and availability of these devices with the interface state.
Map Views: The view allows visualization of network devices, servers, or DB clusters and storage devices on Google/ Zoho maps. It also displays the status of the device with quick drill-down options.
3D Rack and Floor Views: This allows you to recreate your server room and view the racks and servers in a 3D form factor. It shows you the status of servers and ports, and allows for quick identification and easy troubleshooting. In other words, you view a live representation of your server room from the network operations center (NOC).
Layer 2 Maps: This view provides a detailed representation of data center network topology, all the nodes, interconnected layers, and port-to-port connectivity of your data center network devices from a seed/core router.
CCTV Views: This view allows you to project your dashboards to a larger screen for NOC monitoring purposes. It gives you complete visibility into your data center's network performance from the NOC room.
