Improve Network Latency and Hold Service Providers to SLAs

ca Opscenter
Improve Network Latency and
Hold Service Providers to SLAs
Ahmed Kira
OCX64S #CAWorld
CA Technologies
Service Assurance Sales Engineering

2 © 2014 CA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Abstract
A leading pharmaceutical company leverages CA
Network Flow Analysis, CA Application Delivery
Analysis and CA eHealth to improve network
latency by up to 39% and hold their service
providers to their Service Level Agreements.
Ahmed Kira
CA Technologies
Advisor,
Service Assurance
Sales Engineering

Agenda
BACKGROUND
BEST PRACTICES & SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE
Q&A
USE CASE 1: REDUCING NETWORK LATENCY BY 39%
USE CASE 2: PROACTIVELY HOLDING SERVICE PROVIDER ACCOUNTABLE
USE CASE 3: FAULT ISOLATION
1
2
3
4
5
6

Background
20,000 Employees
Leading Pharmaceutical Company
60+ Global Sites
Pioneer in treating
bone and kidney cancers
Innovative research with
‘biology first’
12,000 devices
6+ million
netflow records/minute
11 Global Data Centers
Almost $20 billion
Annual Revenue

 IPSLA/Response monitoring across links
– Edge router to router
– Eliminates LAN, which Service Provider is not responsible for
– Can emulate different Quality of Services
 Network Connection Time
– Based on packet analysis
– Calculated from real transactions, not synthetic; no period missed
– Not subject to ‘Delayed Acks’, which impact ‘Network Round Trip Time’
– Averaged across many transactions
What metrics needs to be tracked?
BEST PRACTICES

User Server
Application
Transaction
ADA Collector
No
Response
Data Response B2
Server Connection
Setup Time
Network Connection
Setup Time
ACK Response B2
ACK Response B1
Data Response B1
No
Response
Data Response B1
Data Response B1
HTTP GET index.html (Data Request B)
ACK Response A2
ACK Response A1
Data Response A1
HTTP GET index.html (Data Request A)
Data Response A2
TCP(80) SYN
TCP(80) SYN ACK
TCP(80) ACK
Service
Provider
Network

Network Round Trip Time & Network Connect Time
Serialization
Delay
Queue
Delay
Forwarding
Delay
Distance
Delay
Protocol
DelayNRTT
Fiber:
5.5us/km
Satellite:
3.3us/km
Media
Access
Delayed
ACKsPer Hop Behaviors
NCT
Smaller frame
size means lower
serialization
delay
No
Delayed
ACKs

Network Round Trip Time & Network Connect Time
NCT
NRTT
Consistent
More suited for
when analyzing
specific
application traffic;
Tuning to exclude
keep-alive
processing

CA Solution Architecture in production
CA Spectrum
CA Network
Flow Analysis (NFA)
Network Traffic Flow
Analysis
CA Performance Center
CA Application Delivery Analysis
(ADA)
Integrated
Workflow
Centralized Fault ManagementCentralized Performance Management
Exceptions
3rd Party
Alarms
- L2-L3 Auto-Discovery
- Topology Visualization
- Network Configuration Management
- Root Cause Analysis
- Asset, Alarm, and Availability Reporting
CA eHealth
Abnormal Application
Performance Detection
Proactive Investigation
Device
management IPSLA

Use Case 1:
Decreasing network response by 39%

Background
 Relatively high costs was original motivator
 Need for additional capacity to accommodate growth
 Lack of responsiveness and accountability from prior service
provider
 Unacceptable SLA performance for errors and out of order
packets
 New vendor selected to address business needs

Prior to circuit cutover
Network Connection Time Retransmission Delay
 Network Connection Time average of
22 ms, while acceptable, not prime
 Retransmission delay considered
unacceptable

During Circuit Cutover
No more Netflow from old interface as it decommissioned around 13:25
39% drop in
network
connect time!
Promising
retransmission
delay

After Circuit Cutover
Stable NCT at under
14 ms. Notice old
baseline! A 39%
reduction!
Continued
positive trend!
Negligible
retransmission
delay!

Results
 Changing service resulted in
– reduced costs
– improved quality of service
 Problems primarily documented through use of
– CA Application Delivery Analysis (leveraging Network Connect Time
and Retransmission Delay for specific network location filters)
– CA Network Flow Analysis

Use Case 2:
Proactively holding Service Provider accountable

Background
 Multiple links with same network service provider between
key data centers and locations
 SLA includes traffic load balancing.
 Benefits of load balancing:
– No one circuit has heavy utilization, thus reducing network queuing
delay and contention
– Extra bandwidth available for busy periods
Traffic Load Balancing

Was any traffic load balanced?
Upon setting up views shortly after circuits provisioned, administrators
noticed no load balancing was occurring
Uneven flow
of traffic
across paired
circuits

Results
Hold service provider accountable
Detailed Insight
By leveraging CA Network Flow
Analysis:
 Evident that uneven load
balancing was occurring
 Provide additional
analysis whether behavior
was due to a type of
service or protocol
mapping
Proactive
Detected situation before it
becomes a problem with
heavier traffic throughput.
Accountability
Escalated to service provider to
hold them accountable to their
SLA.

Use Case 3:
When the Service Provider is NOT at fault

Background
 Overseas location in Europe complaining of slow application
response times. Blaming the network!

Is it the server?
Leveraging, eHealth views
in Performance Center,
customer validates
low server load

Network Consistency
Distance between locations is 9,000 km (6,000 miles)
Filtered for non WAN-optimized traffic
Network Connection Time over 1 week is consistent at around
150 ms. No significant spikes in network performance.
Retransmission delay negligible with few peaks to 1 ms.
Not the
network
!

Results
Speedy & Effective Fault Determination
ID Fault Domain
The issue was concluded to
NOT be the network, so the
provider was not to blame.
Real Root Cause
Using CA Application Delivery
Analysis, it was determined
that the application was
making thousands of queries
per minute.
 Many TCP sessions
 1 User
Actionable
Host the application closer to
the database server
Or
Use database replication and
access local database
Or
Tune applications to make
fewer queries

Summary
Key topics
A leading global
pharmaceutical company with
over $100 Billion Market
Capitalization needs to reduce
cost of network services, yet
improve quality of service for
corporate and business partner
end-users
Findings
By Leveraging CA Application
Delivery Analysis (ADA), CA
Network Flow Analysis (NFA),
and CA eHealth, the
pharmaceutical company
proactively tracks service
provider latency, network
response times, and ensure
service providers are fulfilling
their SLA obligations.
Experiences
- Reduced network latency
by up to 39%
- Proactively ensure
optimum application
response times
- Assure that Service
Provider is within latency
SLA

For More Information
To learn more about DevOps, please visit:
http://bit.ly/1wbjjqX
Insert appropriate screenshot and text overlay
from following “More Info Graphics” slide here;
ensure it links to correct page
DevOps

For Informational Purposes Only
This presentation was based on current information and resource allocations as of August 2014 and is subject to change or withdrawal by CA
at any time without notice. Not withstanding anything in this presentation to the contrary, this presentation shall not serve to (i) affect the
rights and/or obligations of CA or its licensees under any existing or future written license agreement or services agreement relating to any
CA software product; or (ii) amend any product documentation or specifications for any CA software product. The development, release and
timing of any features or functionality described in this presentation remain at CA’s sole discretion. Notwithstanding anything in this
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Copyright © 2014 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong
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