Learn how to use Intermapper charts to help you make decisions about upgrade, load balancing, and hardware deployment, and to troubleshoot your network.
Transcript
Is your wireless signal strength dropping? Is the jitter from those video cameras increasing? Think it's time to increase capacity between sites but don't have the data to support the investment? Use Intermapper charts to get the real picture. Here's how.
Here's an Intermapper map with a pro curve switch and two status windows. In the device status window, you can see summary information about the switch: DNS name, IP address, type of probe, and how long the switch has been up. Below that are statistics about availability and packet loss as well as the most recent response time.
This is the status window for the link to the switches port 30. Notice that in both status windows, many of the values are underlined. Any underlined data value can be charted. To create a chart, click and release one of the underlined data values. I've just created a chart of incoming bytes per second for this port. The chart is being updated at the poll interval specified by the device or map. In this case, the default 30 second poll interval. To add more datasets, drag other data points into the chart. You can add them from the same status window or from any link interface or device status window on the map.
So now, our chart is recording incoming and outgoing bytes per second for this port. That's how you create a chart. Let's take a look at a chart that's been collecting data for a while. This chart shows the five most active ports on a Cisco switch. You can see and compare data for each port. If a chart is getting a bit cluttered, click a box next to the chart's legend to hide a particular dataset. Click the box again to show the dataset. The clock at the bottom-left changes the charts timescale. I've changed the scale from one minute per division to ten minutes per division. Open the chart options window to view the many options you can use to control the appearance of the chart.
To edit the options for a chart, first choose edit chart from the chart options dropdown menu in the lower-left corner of the chart, then choose chart options. At the top of the window, you can edit the title of the chart. This text appears in the chart's title bar. Click apply to see the effect of any change you make in the chart options window. On the vertical axis tab, you can enter a label for the vertical units, control the vertical scale for the chart, and specify the number of divisions and subdivisions. Adjust the vertical scale automatically or set it to a specific range of values. Finally, choose to view the vertical axis on a linear or logarithmic scale.
The Time Axis tab controls what appears on the horizontal or time axis of the chart. Show or hide the day of week or time, and specify whether the time is displayed in 12 or 24 hour format. You can also set a number of subdivisions between time divisions. Use the data tab to edit the datasets and their appearance in the chart. Click a dataset. You can edit the appearance of a dataset including the label, line color, and style, and choose an icon to appear at each data point.
You can see the effect on the chart as soon as you click okay. You can also remove a dataset from the chart entirely, export the data to a text file, or you can delete a range of data from the dataset. Use the colors tab to control the appearance of the chart. You can control the color of the interior or exterior frame and text colors as well as the colors of the horizontal, vertical and major dividers. Choose create log file to log the data to a tab delimited text file. There are a number of options.
Specify a title. A date code is automatically added to each file name. Choose a rotation period to control the amount of data that gets saved. Choose a day to start a new file and the number of days or weeks you want to keep a log file before deleting it. If you choose never, all chart data is written to a single log file with no limit placed on the size of the file. Choose an update interval to specify how often the data gets saved. You can also send log data to a Syslog server. If you choose this option, specify an IP address, Syslog facility and severity.
Log files are saved in the Intermapper logs folder found in the Intermapper settings folder. You can import this data to Excel, a database, or any other application in which you find it useful. When you create log files, all data is stored in the log files until they are deleted. When you run Intermapper database along with Intermapper, chart data is stored in the Intermapper database. There is no need for a log file.
With Intermapper database, you can specify retention policies for chart data. Why use charts? To monitor quality of service. Choose the wireless probes to chart signal strength. Use the Cisco IP SLA jitter probe to chart jitter and latency on your video cameras.
Troubleshoot your network, find out why the network is running slowly, and identify spikes in use or traffic hogs. Identify areas needing load rebalancing. Monitor for upgrade, identify links or servers that are near capacity so they can be upgraded. Deploy hardware for wireless access points, chart user connections over time and re-deploy hardware for more efficient use. That's charting in a nutshell. For more information, see the user guide available from the help menu.
