1. Presented By: #NercompPDO3
Angelo Santabarbara Director Networks & Systems
Ryan Decker and Perry Gava Network & System Engineers

2. bit.ly/nercomp_NetworkA
#NercompPDO3
During or after the workshop, please take a few minutes to complete the online survey at the following link:
bit.ly/nercomp_NetworkA

3. Background Siena College is a liberal arts college in Albany, NY
Approximately 3,200 students of which 2,600 live on campus
18,721 interfaces currently monitored in Statseeker
Statseeker used to provide additional centralized insight beyond what we get with OEM tools and PRTG monitoring
Not currently monitoring wireless or Ethernet interfaces on Ruckus H510 AP’s (~2000 interfaces) as we are in the midst of wireless conversion to Ruckus.

4. Every Port, Every Minute, Everywhere
Statseeker collects data on all monitored interfaces every 60 seconds
Statseeker’s goal is to give you real time and historical network insight in 30 seconds or less to produce visible information from a lot of raw data
Official specification states 1 physical 64 bit server can monitor 500k interfaces with no additional poller hardware (FedEx is largest user with 20K devices and 520K interfaces)
That server is a FreeBSD based “appliance” that contains the database, poller, web server, and reporting engine
Apache web server, proprietary NOSQL data store, and RESTful API interface

5. Network Discovery Discovery of 600,000 interfaces in about an hour
Can collect and store real-time critical data from Netflow, sFlow, Syslog and SNMP Trap compatible devices.
Network statistics collected include data usage, latency, errors, discards, CPU, Memory, Disk and Temperature values. Statistics are collected via SNMP and ICMP polling
All Interfaces reported on, not just some uplink ports like many other tools

6. Storage Sizing
Size appropriately if you want to keep long term data as data is kept indefinitely and never gets aggregated, truncated, or “rolled up.” This is by design so raw data is always available for live reporting
Rule of thumb for disk sizing is 1GB of disk space per 1000 interfaces per year
In Siena’s case that’s about 20GB per year
Backup regularly using built in tools

7. Reporting and Data Insight
Data is provided in real time and customizable
Many canned reports are available that give you instant insight to your network
Simple custom reporting engine to generate pretty much any report you need
Historic data and different chronological views are selectable on most reports and are generated in seconds
Reports refresh on 60 second interval as data refreshes
Customizable dashboard gives immediate overview of network

8. So Why and How do We Use It?
First off, PRTG is the primary way we monitor our devices, servers, and services. Alerting is all done through PRTG.
None the less, Statseeker is an integral part of our “network toolbox”
Gives us immediate view into our network to help us to identify problems, to recognize trends, and to point us in the right direction to find that needle in a haystack.
Quickly identifying the highest utilization by interface with a historical perspective allows us to solve problems much faster than using multiple tools and switch by switch interrogation
Real time data is often not "information“…Real time data combined with historical data quickly becomes information as trends, outliers, and traffic patterns are revealed

9. Let’s see some examples
Top X Network – good overview report
Interface Usage (90 days)
Hardware Inventory then Device Hardware Inventory
Top Delay Graphs (compare old switches to new core for drastic difference)
Top Utilization
Bits per second-very useful for per device analytics
Discards – Major problems show immediate and obvious differences in traffic patterns

10. Other Useful Features LDAP integration Reports and Dashboards by user
Role based access to data and reports
Groups and filters are dynamic...can be based on name, vlan, etc.
Alerting available through or SysLog and can be based on any data polled from devices

11. #NercompPDO3
Thank you!
Your feedback is very important to us. During or after the workshop, please take a few minutes to complete the online survey at the following link: bit.ly/nercomp_NetworkA
Useful presentation by Statseeker engineer available at: