Flowmon Overview - Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics
I have recently been doing some work with Flowmon to further understand Flowmon’s Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) functionality. Below you can see my doodle covering the technology.
In-brief Flowmon, which is now part of Progress, following the Kemp acquisition, gives network operators visibility and insights into network performance and issues. It does this by enriching flow data with level 7 application data, giving enhanced network insight without the overheads of full packet capture. Critical to this is the Flowmon collector appliance which can receive data as Netflow, IPFIX or any standard flow record like sflow, jflow or netstream.
With this collected data, Flowmon provides;
Autonomous investigation for route cause of operational issues
In-built expert knowledge of network error codes with remedial action
Reduced and simplified toolset, allowing delegation of networking monitoring and troubleshooting
Reduction of network diagnostic noise, allowing problems to be resolved quickly and easily
I was able to understand some of the use cases in action, this included following the process of an administrator trying to diagnose slow internet performance reported by users. Utilising the Flowmon toolset, the problems were able to be tracked down within a few steps. The root cause, diagnosed through Flowmon was an incorrect client configuration, resulting in increased network traffic. This was due to Windows updates being pulled down directly from the internet rather than from the local WSUS server. Without Flowmon, this may have taken Network Admins and other teams many hours to diagnose and resolve.
I was really impressed by what I saw of Flowmon, without tools like this, troubleshooting user issues is often a difficult task, with admins trying to understand where the problem lies between the applications, the network and the user. Flowmon gives network admins the tools they need, not only to resolve problems quickly but to be proactive in their troubleshooting.
Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Progress to create content covering the Flowmon product set. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Progress.