Performance and fault management encompasses a wide array of tools and topics. Traditionally, network management tools provided logs of network systems messages (traps, syslog) and colored statuses of each device and interface (green means up, red means down). While these systems were valuable for network troubleshooting, they did not report on or inform an engineer of the health of a network system until it actually went down. Understanding the activities of a router or switch requires more than knowing whether the device is up or down. You probably want to know some of the following types of information:
Aside from general device health, you probably also want to understand how characteristics of the network devices affect the reliability of the network. For instance, are too many people trying to dial into your ISDN router? Are too many collisions occurring on the Ethernet segments? How much traffic is too much? How much is normal for the network? These are essential questions that network engineers and managers ask. Questions about how much is too much come into the Cisco TAC, and the answer, much to customer dismay, is "it depends." Performance and fault management encompasses issues such as the following:
This book addresses these issues. In addition, it teaches you how to navigate Cisco's documentation, MIBs, and management in order to keep up with the constantly changing pace of managing Cisco devices. |