Prisma SD-WAN
WAN Clarity Data Center Reports
Table of Contents
WAN Clarity Data Center Reports
Learn about the WAN Clarity Data Center reports.
The Data Center reports
provide an insight into utilization trends from a Data Center perspective.
Similar to the branch reports, these reports identify top applications,
source IP addresses, destination IP addresses, source-destination
IP address pairs, and undefined domains along with top branches. You
can generate this set of reports for hotspots observed in the data
center.
It is important to note that a hotspot definition
for a data center differs from that for a branch. While for branches,
utilization over 70% of configured bandwidth is considered a hotspot,
for a data center, you may consider 90th percentile utilization
as a hotspot. It, therefore, becomes imperative that you accurately
set the circuit bandwidth allocations at the data center. These
reports provide an approximation of the utilization trends as the
reports generated only consider overlay paths.
In summary, the WAN Clarity Report generates every week to help
you understand how the circuits in the Prisma SD-WAN AppFabric can
be utilized from an entire fabric, site, circuit, application, and
user perspective. These reports provide actionable insights that
you can use for capacity planning, path policy adjustments, QoS
policy adjustments, and enforcement of proper use of network resources
by the end-user community.
The following sections describe the data center reports in the
WAN Clarity Reports in more detail.
- Traffic Distribution
- Circuit Utilization
- Top N Reports
Traffic Distribution
The Traffic Distribution report helps administrators
understand traffic volume distribution to all the data centers in
the AppFabric. These reports help understand traffic flow from branches,
applications, and top applications from top branches to and from
the data centers in the form of Sankey charts. These reports deliver
an HTML report with Sankey charts for the top 10 contenders and
a CSV file with the entire dataset.
Traffic
Distribution: Top Applications Report
Provides details
into the flow of application traffic to and from all the data centers
in the AppFabric. It provides visibility into the top 10 ingress
and egress applications by volume.
The
HTML report also provides an insight into top applications by total
volume across all the DCs in the form of a Combined Egress and Ingress
traffic report.
In
the examples above, there is only a single data center: DC1. The
data flow label above the data center block indicates traffic flow,
either to or from that data center.
In the case of multiple
DCs, you may decipher the traffic volume going to each of the data
centers from the flow stream's thickness. The supplemental CSV can
help understand the accurate distribution of application traffic
volume across the data centers.
See
the sample report below:
Traffic
Distribution: Top Branches Report
Provides details into
the flow of branch traffic to all the data centers in the AppFabric.
It provides visibility into the top 10 ingress and egress flows
from branches by volume and a combined summary report.
Traffic
Distribution: Top Applications from Top Branches
Provides
details into the top 10 applications emerging from the top 10 branches
to all the data centers in the AppFabric. The report provides visibility
into top ingress and egress branches and the top applications' flow
by volume emerging from these branches.
Circuit Utilization
The Circuit Utilization report
provides the utilization summary for all DC circuits on both the
ingress and egress directions. The circuit utilization report consists
of raw data packaged in CSV files that have information on circuit utilization
data and percentile utilization. The report package also contains
an HTML report for each DC circuit.
The HTML report contains
a series of topics that shed light on the bandwidth utilization,
observed hotspots, branches, applications, source IPs, destination
IPs, and unknown domains contributing to those hotspots. We classify
a circuit to be hot when the utilization is at the 90th percentile.
The report provides a summary of the circuit configuration and bandwidth
utilization in the form of provisioned bandwidth, median utilization,
and 90th percentile utilization.
The Circuit Utilization report
summarizes the circuit configuration and bandwidth utilization in
the form of provisioned bandwidth, median utilization, and 90th
percentile utilization.
The
table above is from a report for DC1 - Circuit, where the 90th percentile
utilization is at 5.33595% of the provisioned bandwidth, indicating
that the circuit is not contentious and possibly overprovisioned.
The
Circuit Utilization report then plots the utilization trend for
the past week in an interactive chart that can zoom in and study
the trend in detail. It also marks the 90th percentile utilization
and highlights hotspots in red.
In
the sample report above, the utilization above 53.35951 Mbps, as
mentioned in the table, is highlighted in red as possible hotspots.
The
circuit utilization report then highlights the top branches, applications,
source IPs (branch IPs for ingress reports), destination IPs (branch
IPs for egress reports), IP pairs, and undefined domains contributing
to the hotspot. The sample reports below highlight the top contributors
to the hotspots for DC1 – Circuit 1.
Hotspot Reports
The Hotspot reports
generated for every DC site circuit give us visibility into the
circuit’s 90th percentile utilization. The reports provide a list
of branches, applications, undefined domains, destination IPs, source
IPs, and source and destination IP pairs observed during the hotspots.
| Hotspot Report | Description |
|---|---|
| Hotspot: Top Branches | Highlights the traffic volume contributed
by the top 10 branches during the hotspot observed on the DC circuit. Use
data from this report to redefine data center transit features under
path policies for branches. Top branch transmitting traffic
on this circuit when utilization is above the 90th percentile is
shown below: 
|
| Hotspot: Top Apps | Highlights the top 10 applications contributing
to the hotspot observed on the DC circuit over the course of the week. Use
data from this report to redefine path policies for applications
that may directly offload to the internet. This report can also
help network administrators redefine application priority to apply
the right QoS to frequently used applications. Top applications
receiving traffic on this circuit when the utilization is above
the 90th percentile is shown below: 
|
| Hotspot: Top Undefined Domains | Highlights the top 10 undefined defined
domains contributing to the hotspot observed on the DC circuit over
the week. Use data from this report to redefine existing custom applications
or create new custom applications. Top undefined domains discovered
for apps http, ssl, enterprise-http, and enterprise-ssl, receiving
traffic on this circuit when utilization is above the 90th percentile
is shown below: 
|
| Hotspot: Top Source IPs | Highlights the top 10 source IPs contributing
to the hotspot observed on the DC circuit over the week. For the
Ingress direction, these IPs are the Branch IPs. 
For
the egress direction, these IPs may identify as source IPs, i.e.,
indicating the origin being the data center. 
Use
data from this report to identify top contributors to the hotspot
on the DC circuit and establish proper network resource enforcement. |
| Hotspot: Top Destination IPs | Highlights the top 10 destination IPs contributing
to the hotspot observed on the DC circuit over the week. 
For
the egress direction, these IPs are the Branch IPs, indicating the
flow termination are branches in the App-Fabric. 
Use
data from this report to identify top contributors to the hotspot
on the DC circuit and establish proper network resource enforcement. |
| Hotspot: Top IP Pairs | Highlights the top 10 source and destination
IP pairs contributing to the hotspot observed on the DC circuit
over the week. 
|
The Circuit Utilization report is generated
for both ingress and egress directions for each data center circuit.
It can assess utilization trends, refine path and QoS policies, and
identify users who are misusing network resources, enabling the
network administrators to enforce proper use of network resources.
Top N Reports
The Top N reports are
a set of reports that provide insight into the top branches, applications,
source IPs, destination IPs, source and destination IP pairs, and
undefined domains for the entire week. Generate these reports for
each data center in a CSV file with information about all the specific
category contributors.
Use the insights from this report to
understand site-specific trends and turn them into actions such
as changing path policies, changing application priorities, and
reassessing the provisioned bandwidth for over-subscribed and under-utilized
circuits.
Unlike the Hotspots report, which only looks at
flows that traversed the network during periods of hotspots, the
Top N report studies flow and application data for the entire week
to determine which applications, users, and domains contribute the
most to high bandwidth utilization.