SurePath use cases

To monitor the performance of cloud/SaaS applications by measuring network latency and packet loss

To review application performance before cloud migration

To verify disaster recovery plans

To maintain application performance

SurePath can help and enhance your network management in a number of scenarios. Please find below explanation of and instruction in some common use cases.

To monitor the performance of cloud/SaaS applications by measuring network latency and packet loss:

IT teams are responsible for maintaining the performance of applications and services that live in the managed network and the cloud. As the popularity of SaaS services continues to grow, IT teams need tools to preserve application performance by easily troubleshooting issues. SurePath helps to monitor the performance of cloud/SaaS applications by measuring network latency and packet loss.

These details about the SurePath path are provided in the Path Discovery dashlet. The dashlet is divided into three sections:

1. path summary information bar.
   • this provides a quick summary of the path's current details.
2. visual depiction of the path and its nodes.
   
   • name, IP and adjusted/raw latency data is provided for each node.
   • any issues on each node
3. historical timeline of path discoveries.
   • historical bar chart of path discoveries, appearing as a chart of latency vs time.

Please see the link for each section above for further help and information.

To review application performance before cloud migration:

When moving applications from your data center to the cloud, you will need to consider how the migration will affect application performance. SurePath enables you to monitor the latency of key paths the application currently uses and that of paths in the cloud environment, so you can see what the latency of those paths will be once the app is hosted in the cloud.

Comparing these results will show whether application performance is sufficiently improved once in the cloud to justify a cloud migration. It also provides details of possible problems with applications that are latency sensitive.

The working process might go as follows:

1. You have an application that you want to migrate to the cloud from on-premises. You want to ensure performance is not degraded.
2. Currently, users from 5 different locations access your application, and you want to understand performance from each of those locations.
3. Use SurePath to discover the current performance of your on-premises application. To do this, install a SurePath agent at each of your 5 users' locations, and then create paths to monitor to your application from those 5 locations.
4. Then install your application in the cloud, e.g. in AWS. Create 5 more paths from the users' locations to the new cloud endpoint. This will provide you with the data to analyze and compare with the on-premises performance data. You can then evaluate and decide whether to permanently migrate your application to the cloud.

To verify disaster recovery plans:

Surepath can help test and validate your business' disaster recovery plans:

1. Set up and create your network path(s) to obtain the path latency, routing and resilience data you need for your current configuration.
2. Run your disaster recovery (DR) testing, which may involve making configuration changes to devices and managed objects to reflect the intended DR routes.
3. SurePath will continue to monitor the path from source to destination and reflect the changed path taken in the discovered batches. Using the Path Discovery dashlet, you can compare the path and its performance before, during and after disaster recovery testing.

To maintain application performance:

Use SurePath to shows you how application traffic travels through the network, and helps you identify if problems are on your network or someone else's.

• nodes that appear within your network will be identified by an icon appropriate to their object type. Please see this section for further information on the types of icon that appear in the SurePath.
• Nodes that appear on public networks (the internet, i.e. beyond your managed network) will have a globe icon . Note: If there are nodes that you are not managing in Entuity and they exist in private IP address spaces, these nodes will not show as public network nodes. Private IP address spaces are: 
  
  • 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
  • 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
  • 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

SurePath will highlight any issues that have arisen on the node:

• path latency
• path unreachable
• path deviation.