TECHNICAL DATA
SDN Monitoring
Entuity Network Analytics provides support for both Cisco ACI and VMware NSX software-defined networking technologies.

CISCO ACI MONITORING
Cisco’s ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) has been developed to simplify and ease the transition to SDN to meet demands for agile methodologies such as DevOps. ENA matches this demand with comprehensive support for Cisco ACI that extends network management beyond SNMP to include tenants, pods, application profiles and endpoint groups, etc.
ENA monitors the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches on which the APIC (Application Policy Infrastructure Controller) operates. We can take the APIC under management, show you how it’s configured, and alert you to issues that arise on it. Correlating data on the Nexus switches and the APIC itself, we give you comprehensive visibility into the running of your APIC and Nexus kit.
Discover Cisco ACI deployments controlled by the APIC
Once you have taken the Cisco APIC under management, ENA will immediately detect any new Cisco ACI deployments controlled by that APIC and then begin monitoring them. Extend your network whenever and wherever you want, and ENA will keep an eye on it for you.

Measure 10 metrics from the APIC
Gain insight into every part of the Cisco APIC, which is the central component of the ACI. ENA measures the following metrics, covering all aspects of the APIC model:
APIC Memory Utilization %
Endpoint Group Health
Fabric Node Health
Fan Tray Health
Line Card Health
Pod Health
Power Supply Health
Supervisor Card Health
Tenant Health

Maintain the health of your Cisco APIC
For all metrics (except APIC CPU and APIC Memory), APIC health is measured as a percentage.
- 100% = healthy.
- 0% = unhealthy.
Cisco advises that if health drops below 90%, then there is a problem. Therefore, ENA sets 90% as the default health threshold. When a metric’s health drops below 90%, ENA generates an event on that metric.
For the APIC CPU and APIC Memory metrics, ENA uses a percentage based on usage:
- 100% usage = unhealthy.
Reduce MTTRS with ACI-specific events and incidents
- SDN Controller Poll Failure.
- SDN Controller Poll Failure Cleared.
- ACI Low APIC Memory (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low APIC Memory Cleared.
- ACI Low APIC CPU (relative to threshold).
- ACI High APIC CPU Cleared.
- ACI Low EPG Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low EPG Health Cleared.
- ACI Low Tenant Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low Tenant Health Cleared.
- ACI Low Supervisor Card Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low Supervisor Card Health Cleared.
- ACI Low PSU Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low PSU Health Cleared.
- ACI Low Fan Tray Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low Fan Tray Health Cleared.
- ACI Low Line Card Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low Line Card Health Cleared.
- ACI Low Fabric Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low Fabric Health Cleared.
- ACI Low Pod Health (relative to threshold).
- ACI Low Pod Health Cleared.
Correlate ACI faults with wider network events and incidents
If ENA raises events and incidents against a particular Cisco APIC health metric, use the ACI Fault dashlet to view the ACI faults on that component and quickly see exactly what is impacting the APIC.
ACI faults are a separate concept to ENA events and incidents, and only exist within the APIC itself.

Meet the challenge of scaling networks
Cisco ACI deployments are all about increasing the efficiency of network provisioning and making it easier to scale. ENA is endlessly scalable without suffering performance issues, making it the perfect solution for growing businesses and service providers taking on more customers. Keep on top of your increasingly dynamic and distributed network, from legacy installations to Cisco ACI’s SDN deployments, in one solution.
Monitor SDN as part of your wider infrastructure
Network components don’t exist in isolation. You need the ability to see the bigger picture. ENA’s all-in-one, dashboard-centric UI enables you to:


See how your ACI fits in with the rest of your network through any number of our flexible and customizable dynamic dashboards, meaning you can monitor issues and find their causes with minimal effort.

Directly manage the switches in the APIC by SNMP, allowing you to draw a whole host of complementary information, such as topology, port-level activity, resource utilization and flow export capability.

Understand how your Cisco ACI deployment is affecting the business services your network provides through ENA’s service functionality.

Manage your Cisco ACI in a way that best suits you.
Future developments
Entuity is currently developing functionality to enable discovery and monitoring of the elements attached to the ACI fabric. This will give you insight into the objects such as hypervisors, virtual machines and physical servers running on the leaves of the APIC. Complete your network monitoring visibility with analytics of the physical and virtual elements across your legacy and software-defined network.
VMware NSX VXLAN SUPPORT
Augment flow reporting

Quickly find causes and impacts of heavy link traffic
You might have a link in the network or cloud between a pair of routers that is maxed out, or you want to take it down for maintenance. How can you tell what this will impact?
ENA unifies VXLAN and flow monitoring to give you insight into the flows on your virtual distributed switches, so you can find out which virtual machine is using which link in your network or cloud. Filter the appropriate IP addresses to find which VMs are talking to each other and traffic volumes, for example. Discover why links are hot, who’s using specific links, and if you can safely take a link down.

Monitor the whole network
Automated discovery of VMs alongside the other devices and components of your network puts your SDN in the context of its environment. Understand traffic rates, packet rates, application breakdowns and QoS settings, so that you can help provide optimal performance across both physical and virtual networks.