Mission control, we are a go! Network operations is like mission control: Multiple tools, innumerable metrics, complex telemetry, and trying to determine if everything is under control. Many times, the problems are exacerbated by not having access to all the tools, data, and information spread across multiple systems, not being able seamlessly navigate, and not having platforms that provide an intuitive and unified user experience.
At Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), we want to make sure that we’re providing the right monitoring and observability tools to simplify your operations, reduce the time to identify and root cause issues, and offer a unified user experience. To make this goal a reality, we’re taking the first step by announcing the availability of OCI Network Command Center, which brings all the network observability tools together for easier access and a unified user experience.
Network observability features
OCI offers the following observability tools to support various operations use cases:
◉ Virtual network topology visualization: Network Visualizer offers intuitive topology visualization to understand connections and relationships between your virtual network resources, inspect the configuration from one place, and visually troubleshoot any configuration issues.
◉ Troubleshoot and diagnose virtual network configuration issues: Network Path Analyzer allows you to troubleshoot complex virtual network configurations when you have reachability problems. Network Path Analyzer provides automated configuration analysis to determine the network path the traffic takes, identify routing and security configuration issues, and provide the configuration information along the path.
◉ Plan your disaster recovery or edge connectivity with confidence: The interregion latency dashboard provides real-time and historical latency information between two regions. Select your high-availability and disaster recovery use cases and other network planning proposes.
◉ Gain insights into your virtual cloud network (VCN) traffic: VCN flow logs offer network traffic telemetry critical to support your security and network operations use cases. With VCN flow logs, you can gain extensive insights on the network traffic, stream the flow logs to your chosen tool using standard protocols such as Kafka, and archive the flow logs in OCI Object Storage for compliance purposes.
◉ Full packet capture for performance and security analysis: Virtual test access point (VTAP) offers traffic mirroring capabilities that enable full packet capture for security analysis, troubleshooting applications, or network performance issues. VTAP is also useful for troubleshooting complex network problems by analyzing the packet headers.
Each of these network observability tools has its use and benefits. More importantly, these tools work together to offer even more value to you. For novice OCI users, navigating and accessing these tools from different places within the Oracle Cloud Console can be difficult. With no context about the use cases that each tool supports, you can spend more time than necessary troubleshooting operational issues.
How Network Command Center can help
OCI Network Command Center brings all the virtual network monitoring features with the following features:
◉ Providing easy access to all the tools from a single place
◉ Easy-to-understand overviews of the use cases that these tools support
◉ Offering a unified user experience for all the monitoring capabilities
The overview page in Network Command Center provides information on the various monitoring use cases that each of the tools in the Network Command Center supports. When you understand the use case, you can directly launch the tool from there to meet your operational need.
One of the main goals of Network Command Center is to offer a unified user experience across different tools. Let’s walk through a few examples of the unified user experience offered by OCI Network Command Center.
Scenario 1: Using Network Path Analyzer and VTAP
I want to check connectivity between two endpoints to verify the network path and enable full packet capture for deeper troubleshooting. According to the use case description, you can use Network Path Analyzer, create a path analysis check, and verify the actual network path between two endpoints.
When the path check is done, you can enable full packet capture for deeper troubleshooting by launching the VTAP configuration without leaving the Network Command Center screen.
Scenario 2: Troubleshooting crossregion performance issue
Sometimes complex network troubleshooting issues involve using multiple tools to narrow down the root cause. An example of this issue is troubleshooting a performance issue between instances deployed across two different regions. Now, you can use the capabilities available through the Network Command Center.
◉ With Network Visualizer, you can view and get the topology of the remote peering connections (RPCs) interconnecting these regions.
◉ Next, use the interregion latency dashboard to get the real-time latency information between the two regions to rule out any issues with the OCI backbone.
◉ Use VTAP for full packet capture to isolate any network or application issues.
You can use these cross navigations for various operational troubleshooting scenarios, identifying, and resolving issues faster. Network Command Center aims to make it easy for your network operations team to manage and support the virtual network in OCI.
Source: oracle.com
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