Network performance monitoring capabilities can help an operator to proactively identify arising problems and resolve them. This use-case illustrates how a network operator can gather performance data, including response time, one-way latency, jitter (interpacket delay variance), packet loss, network resource availability, application performance, and server response time for various paths in the network. This capability can be extremely helpful in managing and troubleshooting a network.

Splunk is a tool that can be used to gain operational visibility across the IT infrastructure. With Splunk you can search, report, monitor and analyze real-time streaming and historical IT data generated by all your IT systems from one place. Additionally, Splunk can troubleshoot application problems and investigate security incidents, reducing time to repair them.

IP SLA on Nexus device gathers rich network performance data by monitoring and capturing latency and jitter between designated network elements. An on-box collector is required to capture the performance metrics between the network components, and this performance data is aggregated and sent to a central location for further analysis.

Splunk forwarders on NX-OS switch (lightweight Splunk servers with indexing turned off) can be deployed in situations where the data needed isn't available over the network nor visible to the server where Splunk is installed. Splunk forwarders can monitor local application log files, capture the output of status commands on a schedule, grab performance metrics from virtual or non-virtual sources, or watch the file system for configuration, permissions and attribute changes. Forwarders send data securely to the central Splunk server in real time. They are lightweight, can be deployed quickly and no additional cost is incurred.

Enhance Infrastructure Visibility with Splunk Forwarder on Open NX-OS
This use case utilizes numerous Open NX-OS capabilities:

• Guest shell: Guest shell provides a secure, isolated environment for users to install software that extends the switch functionality. We'll install the Splunk forwarder in the guest shell.
• RPM capabilities: Splunk forwarder running in a container or an RPM to send data to a centralized Splunk forwarder.
• Python: A python script running on the switch, utilizing native python capabilities, gathers information to be presented to Splunk.
• NX-API CLI: The python script interacts with NX-OS via NX-API CLI interface and gathers performance data.