Welcome to our latest iteration of the Voice and Network Quality Analyzer available now in your customer portal
Version 2020.2 is the next release following NTA 2019.4 and is compatible with Orion Platform 2020.2
In this release, we’ve implemented a popular feature request to support IPSLA operations from Cisco® Nexus data center switching gear. As we build out hybrid IT environments, monitoring and characterizing performance from the data center looking out is a critical capability.
For IPSLA operations that are pre-provisioned on Cisco Nexus 3K, 7K, and 9K switches, VNQM will discover these and monitor them. VNQM does not include any capability to create new operations on these devices; usually, IPSLA operations are provisioned through the configuration management process. Most of these operations also require some coordination with devices on the other end of the path, as well.
Based on the platform and the operation, some operation types are polled through the CLI. For Cisco Nexus switches, we should provide current CLI credentials.
Supported IPSLA Operations
The matrix of supported operations by platform are detailed below:
| TCP Connect | ICMP Echo | UDP Echo | UDP Jitter | VOIP UDP Jitter | DNS | HTTP | FTP | DHCP | ICMP Path Echo | ICMP Path Jitter | |
| Nexus 3000 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Nexus 7000 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Nexus 9000 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
Note that IPSLA operations are not supported on the Nexus 5K switches.
To monitor operations on this gear, first discover it as an Orion Node. Enable CLI polling, and add and test the CLI credentials for NPM CLI polling.
For many of the Cisco Nexus devices, adding CLI polling during node discovery is useful, for NPM to poll VPC information.
Next, we’ll add this node to VNQM through the “Manage IP SLA Nodes” dialog. Select "Add Node", and follow the dialog to add this device into VNQM.
Finally, we’ll add IP SLA operations from this node from the “Add IP SLA Operations” wizard. We’ll use “Monitor existing operations”, as our IPSLA operations must be pre-provisioned. We’ll automatically discover existing operations.
Note if you're just adding this device you'll be prompted here for credentials specifically for VNQM. Enter these, and validate them in the dialog.
Select the operations you want to monitor, and click “Monitor Operations."
Return to the VNQM Summary view to see your new operations. It may take a few minutes to see a status populate for all of the operations.
New Orion Platform Features
With this VNQM RC comes some fantastic new updates & enhancements to the Orion Platform which include:
- Monitor up to 1,000,000 elements per Orion Platform instance.
- For SAM components the limit is increased to be 550,000 components per SAM installation.
- An Orion Map to Success! - Orion Maps improvements, such as creating and customizing text boxes, labels, or layouts, incorporating custom icons, adding shapes, dynamic backgrounds, bulk administration and all new Time Travel.
- Performance enhancements
- Dashboards, Dashboards, Get Your Dashboards! All New Custom Summary Dashboards
- A Gateway To Your Fastest Upgrade Ever! - Upgrade improvements, such as pre-staging upgrades, upgrade plan reports, automating upgrades via Orion SDK
- Enhanced volume status
- 3rd Party Language Pack Support - scripts to extract UI texts from the Orion Web Console
Your Feedback Counts!
The team is incredibly interested in your feedback, and we'd like to hear more about your implementation experiences! Your consistent feedback really shapes our products; we are constantly reviewing your questions, comments, and experiences to come up with brand new feature ideas that we would want to consider for a future release. Visit our NTA Feature Requests area to tell us what you'd like to see.
