Dig into the Traffic
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Being an all Cisco shop and since NetFlow was developed by Cisco this was a no-brainer for collecting and analyzing traffic on our network. We use it for bandwidth monitoring, network performance analytics, and anomaly detection. I would say we use it more for proving it's not the network and showing the server guys and applications where the issue resides.
Pros
- Bandwidth Monitoring - With the use of OTV within the Nexus environment between 2 of or centralized locations as well as other traffic, we need to know whos hogging the traffic.
- Network Performance Analytics - Having multiple locations, knowing the performance of the data lines is a most.
- Anomaly Detection - Virus, hacks, etc is where this comes in handy.
Cons
- At this point, I don't have any suggestion for improvements.
Likelihood to Recommend
The capacity planning was a big help in our company as we grew the number of connected locations. Grow or die is pretty much the business model of today but that growth is only as good as the network it travels on. Being able to recommend appropriate network requirements is a big deal in our line of business.
