Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management

Transcription

1 EXTRAHOP WHITE PAPER Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Abstract There are numerous benefits from deploying a next-generation Application Delivery Assurance solution. This white paper lists practical examples of realizing instant ROI in a multitude of network- and application-management projects and provides IT Management, Network Operations, and Application Support teams with a realistic and quantifiable roadmap for success. Table of Contents 1. Application Delivery Assurance Overview 1.1. The Need for Application Delivery Assurance 1.2. Key Benefits of Application Delivery Assurance 1.3. Rapid Deployment 2. Common Use Cases for Application Delivery Assurance 2.1. Reducing MTTR through Accelerated Troubleshooting Troubleshooting Intermittent Problems Isolating Slow Database-Stored Procedures and Database Errors Reducing IT Troubleshooting Labor Cost 2.2. Improving Customer Satisfaction through Guided Performance Tuning 2.3. Reducing Hardware Purchases through Better Capacity Planning 3. Real-World Results 4. Summary 2008 ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

2 1. Application Delivery Assurance Overview 1.1. The Need for Application Delivery Assurance The increasing complexity of enterprise application environments is taxing the abilities of application and network teams as they work to ensure performance of existing applications and deliver new applications to meet business demands. Implementing integrated application- and network-management solutions, including emerging Application Delivery Assurance products, should be an important strategy to consider for IT executives focused on reducing the cost and complexity of IT operations. The most acute pain points driving the adoption of new Application Delivery Assurance solutions center around the following common areas: Highly complex application environments blur the line between application- and network-management; it is no longer possible to separate the network from the application. Performance degradations and intermittent problems are difficult to diagnose for both application and network teams and require cross-domain collaboration. Existing tools lag behind the technology curve and lack the ability to provide complete visibility up to L7; these tools fail to pinpoint problems that network and application engineers spend 40% or more of their time solving. Investing in new technology without putting better ADA tools in place exacerbates this problem. Network teams lack the technology and visibility needed to properly tune networking infrastructure for optimal performance. IT departments routinely overbuy hardware and bandwidth due to insufficient capacity planning. IT managers often have difficulty demonstrating quantifiable ROI for new infrastructure or application roll-outs. The good news is that a new generation of network- and application-management solutions has emerged to tackle these problems head-on and bring Application Delivery Assurance to the enterprise Key Benefits of Application Delivery Assurance The benefits of new Application Delivery Assurance solutions are manifold. On a strategic level, they maximize application and infrastructure uptime, quantify and drive higher service levels, drive labor costs significantly lower by stopping the perpetual blamestorm, and deliver actionable insights to IT organizations, both large and small. For CIOs and IT executives, Application Delivery Assurance solutions help to Maximize mission-critical application and infrastructure uptime Reduce cost and complexity in application and network management 2008 ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Page 2

3 Eliminate blamestoming network, application, and database engineers use one unified solution and collaborate to solve problems Improve service levels and maximize existing IT investments For Network Operations teams, Application Delivery Assurance solutions help to Reduce time to resolution Increase productivity and help pinpoint problems quickly Optimize performance through TCP tuning Understand capacity needs and test network designs For Application Support teams, Application Delivery Assurance solutions help to Stop firefighting and end the blamestorm Improve application performance and uptime Measure performance gains from upgrades Gain detailed access to performance information for systems in production In summary, Application Delivery Assurance solutions provide three main benefits for the entire IT organization: 1. Cost savings through faster, integrated troubleshooting Application Delivery Assurance solutions minimize IT labor costs by pinpointing problems through an integrated view of the entire application environment. This integrated view enables IT teams to collaborate to find the true root cause in record time. The ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system takes the guesswork out of the troubleshooting process. Upon detection of a problem, most IT organizations reactively scramble to collect data for diagnosis and resolution, hoping that they are selecting the appropriate metrics. The ExtraHop Delivery Assurance system runs 24x7x365.25, collecting a wealth of information for all groups within the IT organization. With ExtraHop, the metrics needed for troubleshooting are collected on an ongoing basis, enabling network, application, and database engineers to fix problems rather than waste time collecting data. 2. Optimization of network infrastructure through guided tuning As networking equipment becomes more sophisticated, increasingly complex settings and configurations are exposed to network-engineering teams. Even to the most battlehardened network veterans, the myriad of options and obscure terminology can seem daunting. The adverse effects of improperly tuned networking equipment can be quite severe. The ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system shines a spotlight on critical tuning parameters to facilitate the optimal system configuration. The online Help and documentation provide a detailed explanation of each tuning parameter and general guidelines to turn every network engineer into a TCP tuning expert. 3. Proof of ROI and curbing of overspending Without accurate benchmarks, IT organizations tend to overbuy hardware and bandwidth. The fear of underpowered systems motivates IT management to throw dollars at problems, costing businesses millions in unnecessary expenditures. At the other end of the spectrum, a common problem is not being able to justify an equipment purchase due to a lack of understanding of current and projected capacity. The ExtraHop Application Delivery 2008 ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Page 3

4 Assurance system provides intelligent trending and baselining that learns over time, based on observed network patterns. Baselines are calculated separately for the time of day and the day of the week to deliver the most realistic model possible. These detailed metrics enable network teams to plan for capacity and demonstrate the true ROI of infrastructure and application projects Rapid Deployment The ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system is a zero-agent, zero-overhead, and zero-configuration solution. The installation process consists of mounting the appliance in a server rack, enabling a SPAN or network tap for the target network, configuring a management IP, and powering on the system. The whole process takes as little as fifteen minutes. Because the ExtraHop system is designed deliver a disruptive level of performance, users do not have to pick and choose which metrics to record or worry about missing key transactions after the fact. Instead, the ExtraHop system is always on and always collecting performance information for everything that traverses the network. Upon installation, the ExtraHop system passively discovers all network devices without adding additional load or impacting traffic in any way. Unlike some of the more traditional system-management tools, the ExtraHop rapid deployment model delivers instant ROI for network and application management. 2. Common Use Cases for Application Delivery Assurance The ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system is an innovative solution that enables network and application teams to gain complete visibility needed to manage today s complex applications and ensure application performance. The ExtraHop system has been deployed at numerous customer sites to help pinpoint performance problems across the entire IT environment. Analyzing some of these successful deployments reveals a few common use cases that deliver quick and proven Return on Investment (ROI) Reducing MTTR through Accelerated Troubleshooting Enterprise data centers commonly consist of thousands of servers and network devices. The sheer scale and complexity of these environments often force IT operations into a reactive firefighting mode. New Application Delivery Assurance solutions deliver rapid ROI by accelerating the troubleshooting process and solving some of the toughest management challenges Troubleshooting Intermittent Problems The ExtraHop solution delivers a full set of performance metrics that includes both averages and outliers, portraying a realistic picture of application health that highlights intermittent problems. Reactive troubleshooting requires that network and application engineers collect data at precisely the right time and place to observe an intermittent issue. In contrast, the ExtraHop system is always on and always recording, so the necessary information is 2008 ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Page 4

5 available to determine the root cause; network and application engineers no longer have to waste time trying to reproduce problems and collect the appropriate data. Assuming 2% of all transactions experience these intermittent problems, an eight-hour business day, and a cost of $4,200 per hour to the business (Gartner group estimate), the total cost of these intermittent problems is given by Troubleshooting ROI: 0.02 x 8 x $4,200 = $672, or $245,280 annually Isolating Slow Database-Stored Procedures and Database Errors With deep understanding of database protocols, the ExtraHop solution captures and displays the most problematic stored procedures as well as error details. Deploying the ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system can be an effective strategy for dealing with these slow database-stored procedures and transactional errors. Database analysis tools historically have been separate devices shielded from the overall IT department. ExtraHop exposes performance metrics for all groups, creating a common troubleshooting platform with instant ROI. For customers that experience serious database problems, assuming 10% of stored procedures are slow, of which 10% result in the customer abandoning the process, and an additional 5% of transactions exhibit errors, using the same cost to the business estimates above, the daily cost to a business is given by Troubleshooting ROI: ( ) x 8 x $4,200 = $2,016, or $735,840 annually Reducing IT Troubleshooting Labor Cost The ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system minimizes hassles involved with managing applications by pinpointing problems across the entire application environment. Assume an organization has five network engineers and five application support engineers. A very conservative estimate (not including further escalations) would allocate 30% of their time toward troubleshooting application performance issues. If the fully loaded cost of an IT person is $100,000 per year, and the ExtraHop system can reliably reduce troubleshooting time by 50%, then the result is an annual savings given by Troubleshooting ROI: 0.50 x (5+5) x 0.30 x 100,000 = $150,000 annually 2.2. Improving Customer Satisfaction through Guided Performance Tuning Performance tuning provides rapid ROI by eliminating performance degradations, or brownouts, and ensuring customer satisfaction. A December 2006 Nielson study indicates that 4 seconds is the maximum amount of time a customer is willing to wait before jumping to a competing website, so there is a real cost associated with such issues. Assuming the organization can retain 10% more customers after proper performance tuning, using the same cost to the business estimates above, the daily lost revenue is given by Tuning ROI: 0.10 x $4,200 x 8 = $3,360, or $1,226,400 annually 2008 ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Page 5

6 2.3. Reducing Hardware Purchases through Better Capacity Planning Without accurate benchmarks, IT organizations tend to overbuy hardware and bandwidth. The fear of an underpowered system motivates IT management to throw dollars at the problem, costing businesses millions in unnecessary expenditures. Frequently, equipment vendors exacerbate the problem by recommending new purchases or upgrades rather then helping clients to understand the true cause of performance issues. The ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system offers intelligent baselining that learns over time, according to observed network traffic patterns. These detailed metrics enable network teams to plan for capacity and demonstrate the true ROI of infrastructure and application projects. Assume an IT organization spends $1,000,000 a year on new hardware (servers, network equipment, and storage devices) and that 30% of this spending is inessential. The annual capacity planning ROI is given by 3. Real-World Results Capacity Planning ROI: 1,000,000 * 0.3 = $300,000 In the field, the ExtraHop system has delivered valuable results for IT teams, as illustrated by the following success stories from select customers. Database Errors A customer was rolling out a new application. Within minutes, the ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system showed that the number of database errors had jumped from around 20 per minute to about 2,000 per minute. Additionally, the ExtraHop system quickly pinpointed a coding error in certain stored procedures, down to the exact line number. The customer was very happy with the finding because similar errors had taken weeks for the same team to track down prior to implementing the ExtraHop system. Under-Provisioned Virtual Infrastructure A customer had an ever-growing virtualization initiative, with a goal of transitioning 50% of all servers onto virtual platforms within one year. After installation, the ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system showed that the database was experiencing significant packet loss when talking to the virtual servers. Compared to other physical servers connected to the same database, the virtual machines were exhibiting occasional response times in excess of 650 ms, compared to less than 100 ms for physical servers. The ExtraHop system helped to determine that the virtual machines were under-provisioned, resulting in excessive hypervisor context switching that added latency to the transactions. ExtraHop enabled the server, network, and database teams to work together and resolve the issue. Misconfiguration of Network Infrastructure At another customer site, a new application was exhibiting delays to the point that many of their clients called to complain about poor performance. Using the ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system, the customer saw very high levels of retransmission timeouts on the application server. Drilling down within the ExtraHop system, the problem was traced to several hosts behind the same switch. A closer look revealed a misconfiguration on the 2008 ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Page 6

7 switch itself. Once they found the root cause, the network team quickly remedied the issue and application performance was restored to peak levels. Misconfiguration of Storage Cluster A customer determined that their storage array was failing to keep up with high application load. They turned to the vendor for recommendations and were told to buy another unit at a price of over a million dollars. A closer look with the ExtraHop Application Assurance system revealed a misconfiguration: the two storage arrays were set up to constantly replicate to one another. This misconfiguration was exhausting more than 30% of the available capacity. After detecting this problem, the storage team reconfigured storage replication and the application performance was restored without a million-dollar purchase. 4. Summary It is time to move beyond traditional monitoring and adopt Application Delivery Assurance. Getting started is simple and easy: a fifteen-minute install provides instant, meaningful visibility. Customers have found that their new investment often pays for itself in a matter of days. About ExtraHop Networks ExtraHop Networks was founded in early 2007 by Jesse Rothstein and Raja Mukerji, engineering veterans from F5 Networks and architects of the BIG-IP v9 product line. The company s pioneering Application Delivery Assurance system is the industry s first completely passive network appliance that provides application-level visibility with zero agents, configuration, or overhead. The privately held company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and funded in part by Madrona Venture Group. To learn more about ExtraHop and our innovative Application Delivery Assurance system, visit us at ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. ExtraHop and the ExtraHop logo are registered trademarks of ExtraHop Networks ExtraHop Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Achieving Instant ROI for Network and Application Management Page 7