Enabling Network Performance Management and Reporting

Learn about how to enable Network Performance Management (NPM) and NPM reporting.

Overview

Enabling NPM and NPM reporting consists of the following procedures:

  1. Setting Up the Database for NPM

  2. Installing the NPM Package

  3. Setting Up Microservices for NPM

  4. Setting Up Access for NPM

  5. Enriching the Data Model

  6. Discovering Devices for NPM

  7. Setting Up Threshold Alerting for NPM

  8. Accessing and Using NPM Dashboards

  9. Scheduling NPM Reports

Setting Up the Database for NPM

Install Unified Assurance as described in Unified Assurance Installation Guide. If you are installing on a multiple server environment, when installing the Historical database server for NPM, use the Database.Historical role. See Installing Unified Assurance on Historical Database Servers in Unified Assurance Installation Guide for more information.

After installing, run AnalyticsWizard to set up the Observability Analytics database, as described in Installing Analytics Components on Historical Database Servers in Unified Assurance Installation Guide.

Installing the NPM Package

The Unified Assurance release package contains the metricProcessing-data package, which delivers the NPM dashboards. However, when you install the Unified Assurance RPM, it does not automatically install the NPM package. You must install this separately.

To install the NPM package, run the following command as the root user on the server with the Database.Historical role:

/opt/assure1/bin/Package install metricProcessing-data

This package delivers both the Wireline Network Infrastructure and SDWAN report packs. You can only use the report pack that you have purchased the corresponding license for.

Setting Up Microservices for NPM

To enable NPM, you must set up various microservices in the collection and processing layers of Unified Assurance architecture. The collection layer includes the Metric pipeline and the Discovery pipeline, while the processing layer includes the Event pipeline. See Architecture for more information about NPM architecture.

To set up microservices for NPM:

  1. Set up a microservice cluster as described in Microservice Cluster Setup in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide.

  2. Deploy the microservices from the Metric pipeline relevant to your network, including the following pollers:

    • Aruba Central Poller. See Aruba Central Poller in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide for deployment information.

    • Cisco Meraki Poller. See Cisco Meraki Poller in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide for deployment information.

    • Ping Poller. See Ping Poller in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide for deployment information.

    • SNMP Poller. See SNMP Poller in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide for deployment information.

    You must also deploy the version of the Metric Sink microservice that connects to the Observability Analytics database. See Metric Sink in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide for more information on deploying the correct version.

    See Understanding the Metric Pipeline in Unified Assurance Concepts for more information about the microservices you may need.

  3. Set up the Discovery pipeline:

    1. Create the a1-web namespace by running the following command as the root user:

      $A1BASEDIR/bin/cluster/clusterctl add namespace --namespace a1-web

    2. Deploy any microservices relevant to your network, including Web API and Web UI if you want to use the NPM Web API and the guided Network Discovery UI.

    See Understanding the Discovery Pipeline in Unified Assurance Concepts for more information about the microservices you may need.

    !!! note You must deploy the Web API and Web UI microservices on a presentation server.

  4. Deploy any microservices you need from the Event pipeline, including the Standard Threshold Processor if you want to use thresholds in NPM. See Understanding the Event Pipeline in Unified Assurance Concepts for more information about the microservices you may need.

Setting Up Access for NPM

You grant access to NPM dashboards and UIs by assigning permissions to roles. You can also optionally set up multitenancy to isolate data to specific tenants.

To set up access:

  1. Create and update roles with the appropriate permissions. See Permissions Required for NPM for information about the permissions.

    If you are using multitenancy, you may want to create new roles for tenant viewers and tenant operators. You can use the same role for all tenants; the isolation of data is controlled at the user group level. For administrative tasks, you can optionally use the default Administrator role, or create new administrator roles for tenant administration and NPM administration.

  2. If you are using multitenancy:

    1. Create tenant-specific user groups. For example, create the following for each tenant:

      • An Operators user group, for users who will view and update NPM dashboards.

      • A Viewers user group, for users with read-only access to NPM dashboards.

      If there are people at your organization who need to see data from all tenants in the NPM dashboards, but do not need other administrative permissions, you can also create Super Operators and Super Viewers groups. Later, when you create tenants in the Tenants UI, you add these groups to all or multiple tenants.

    2. Set up tenant zones:

      1. In the Device Zones UI, create a device zone for each tenant. Later, when you create tenants in the Tenants UI, you assign these zones to tenants, and you select these zones when using guided discovery.

      2. In the command line, on the server where the microservice cluster is running, add corresponding cluster zones by running the following command as the root user:

        clusterctl add zone --zone <zoneID>

        where <zoneID> is the unique numeric ID that corresponds to the correct device zone that you created in the Device Zones UI.

      3. If you have redundant clusters where metrics are being collected on both clusters, add the cluster zone to the secondary cluster as well:

        clusterctl add zone --zone <zoneID> --secondary

      Caution:

      Make sure to match the IDs correctly. The correspondence between the cluster zone and the device zone that you select in the Tenants UI determines what data is displayed for tenant users. If you create a cluster zone with no corresponding device zone, users will not see any data. If you correlate the wrong zones, users may see data that does not apply to them.

  3. Create tenants and assign user groups and device zones to them by using the Tenants UI.

    If you are using Super Operators or Super Viewers groups, add them to as many tenants as needed.

    If you are not using multitenancy, create a single default tenant, with the default device zone.

  4. Create users as needed.

  5. Optionally, if you want to provide some users with access to a specific NPM dashboard only, without displaying the Unified Assurance or OpenSearch navigation menus, create a link to the dashboard and add it as the user's default link:

    1. Use the Links UI to create a link to the dashboard. Set Type to External without navigations, and include &kiosk=1 at the end of the link.

    2. Use the Users UI to set the DefaultLink preference for the user to the dashboard link.

    When the user logs in, they will see the linked dashboard, with no Unified Assurance navigation menu.

Permissions Required for NPM

The following table describes the permissions needed to support NPM. The roles are general descriptions of the type of role, not specific role names.

Note:

The permissions in the eventAnalytics package grant access to the Observability Analytics database and dashboards required for NPM. Although the metricAnalytics package contains similar-looking permissions, these are related to the legacy way of monitoring metrics with InfluxDB and Grafana, and are not used for NPM.

Package Permission Action Audience Notes
eventAnalytics Viewer N/A General NPM viewer This permission grants read access to the NPM dashboards. If you are using multitenancy, you can use the same role for all tenants.
eventAnalytics Operator N/A General NPM operator This permission grants access to everything in Observability Analytics except Administration: Console and Management. If you are using multitenancy, you can use the same role for all tenants.
eventAnalytics Admin N/A General NPM administrator This permission grants complete access to Observability Analytics. If you are using multitenancy, you can use the same role for all tenants.
AAA Tenants Read, Create, Update, Delete Tenant administrator These permissions grant access to the Tenants UI. Even if you are not using multitenancy, you must set up one default tenant.
By default, no roles have these permissions, even the default Administrator role. You can use the default Administrator role for this purpose, or create a new tenant management administrator role.
metric NpmThresholds Read, Create, Update, Delete NPM administrator These permissions grant access to the NPM Thresholds UI, available from the main Unified Assurance menu by selecting Configuration, then Metrics, then NPM, and then NPM Metrics. These thresholds determine when events are raised for metrics in the Observability Analytics database.
report OpenSearch Read NPM administrator This permission lets you see and select OpenSearch dashboards in the Reports UI. Grant it for roles who will schedule reports based on NPM dashboards.
device DeviceObjects Read, Create, Update, Delete NPM administrator These permissions grant access to the Device Objects UI, available from the main Unified Assurance menu by selecting Configuration, then Metrics, then NPM, and then Device Objects. You use this UI to map NPM thresholds to device metadata to use when creating events based on NPM metrics. Grant it for roles who will set up thresholds and discovery.
device ObjectModel Read, Create, Update, Delete NPM administrator These permissions let you send discovery results to the inventory when using either the NPM guided discovery flow or the traditional microservice discovery flow.
discovery DiscoveryJob Read, Create, Update, Delete NPM administrator These permissions grant access to the Network Discovery UI, available from the main Unified Assurance menu by selecting Configuration, then Metrics, then NPM, and then Discovery Job. You use this UI to discover devices using the guided flow.

See Roles in Unified Assurance User's Guide for information about granting permissions using the Roles UI.

See Permissions Reference in Unified Assurance Security Guide for information about all permissions.

Enriching the Data Model

In NPM, you can enrich the metrics that appear in NPM dashboards with any additional device enrichment metadata important to your deployment. Before discovering and monitoring devices, consider the ways in which you might want to divide your data. For example, you may want to organize by customer name, store number, geolocation, or other data important to your network.

In non-NPM deployments, device metadata is tied to events, but not metrics. In NPM deployments, metrics in the Observability Analytics database automatically include the metadata you configure on a device, such as meta types, device groups, geolocation, and so on.

To enrich the NPM data model:

  1. Set up device enrichment as needed. For example:

    • Configure meta types in the Meta Types UI.

    • Add custom rules to otherwise enrich devices after discovery in the Rules UI.

  2. Discover devices using the guided Network Discovery UI. See Using the Guided Network Discovery Flow for more information.

  3. Enrich the discovered devices as needed. For example:

    Note:

    If you add new attributes to devices, only metrics collected after that point will include them. Previous entries are not updated with the new attributes.

Metrics for the enriched devices automatically include all of the enrichment data. You can see some of this data in the Devices Metadata Dashboard, including:

You can also create custom dashboards and visualizations that include the enrichment data. See Creating Custom Dashboards for more information about customizing dashboards.

Caution:

Do not modify the default dashboards. Any modifications you make will be visible to all users, and will be overwritten with the next Unified Assurance update. Instead, you can clone the dashboards to create new custom ones.

Discovering Devices for NPM

You can use the guided Network Discovery UI to discover SNMP, ICMP, Aruba, and Cisco Meraki devices for NPM. See Using the Guided Network Discovery Flow for more information.

Setting Up Threshold Alerting for NPM

If you want to set up threshold alerting for NPM, you can use the NPM Threshold Management and Device Object Monitoring UIs. See Setting Up NPM Thresholding for more information.

Accessing and Using NPM Dashboards

To access the NPM dashboards:

  1. In the Unified Assurance navigation menu, select Analytics, then Events, and then Dashboards.

    The list of all dashboards appears, including dashboards for Event Analytics and Flow Analytics.

  2. Select an NPM dashboard from the list, or use the search box to find your desired NPM dashboard. The NPM dashboards are identified by the following prefixes:

    • [Metric OPS] for Operations dashboards

    • [Metric ENG] for Engineering dashboards

    • [Metric WAN] for SD-WAN dashboards

For all NPM dashboards, you can perform the following common tasks:

For the lists of NPM dashboards provided by default, and for links to the complete documentation of each dashboard, see the following sections:

Scheduling NPM Reports

You can set up and schedule reports based on the NPM dashboards by using the Unified Assurance Reports UI. See Using Reporting in Unified Assurance Implementation Guide for the required information.