Monitoring PacketShaper Load Balancer S-Series

eG Enterprise offers a special-purpose monitoring model for the PacketShaper Load Balancer S-Series device to monitor the status of the hardware components and data/packet volume from sent over each traffic class, link and partition. Abnormal traffic flows can be instantly detected using this monitored model. This way, the administrators are proactively alerted to issues so that they can initiate remedial actions well before users complain.

By periodically polling the SNMP MIB of PacketShaper Load Balancer S-Series, eG agents collect various metrics of interest relating to performance of the target device. Figure 1 depicts the layer model of a PacketShaper Load Balancer S-Series device.

Figure 1 : Layer model for PacketShaper Load Balancer S-Series

Every layer in the Figure 1 is mapped to various tests to determine the critical statistics related to the performance of the target load balancer. Using the metrics reported by the tests, administrators can find accurate answers for the following performance queries:

  • How well the CPU is utilized by the load balancer?
  • What is the current status of the temperature sensor?
  • What is the current status of the voltage sensor?
  • What is the current status of each fan and power supply unit?
  • How well data/packets are transmitted/received over each traffic class?
  • How many times traffic flows matched each traffic class?
  • How many times policy applied to each traffic class is hit?
  • How well data/packets are transmitted/received over each partition?
  • How well data/packets are transmitted/received over each WAN link?
  • How many packets could not be sent/received over each traffic class?
  • How many packets could not be sent/received over each partition?
  • How many packets could not be sent/received over each WAN link?
  • How many SYN flood attacks are blocked on a client/server when SYN packets were sent/received over each traffic class?

Since the tests mapped to the Network Layer are elaborately discussed in Monitoring Cisco Router document, the sections to come will discuss the other layers in detail.