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Impact Analysis Overview

The Impact Analysis feature combines Apstra's intent-based analytics (IBA) with network service visibility. The Impact Analysis feature utilizes information about the data center network and the services, provided by the Service Aware feature, to enable administrators to quickly isolate and resolve issues that can impact end user experience. The Impact Analysis page provides a graphical representation of the network infrastructure along with the path that the service traffic takes. The network topology provides information about how nodes in the data center are connected to the clients, how application traffic is handled, and how an anomaly in a node in the data center can impact application traffic. These visualizations provide network administrators details of the impact that a link failure can have on application traffic. Instead of displaying several anomalies and causing alert fatigue, the impact analysis feature enables administrators to identify a key anomaly that could be the root cause of an issue that is impacting the application experience.

The Impact Analysis feature uses knowledge graphs to correlate events to issues in the data center network and then map those issues to the potential impact on the applications that are utilizing the network. Whenever an event is generated in the data center, Apstra generates a number of anomalies, which might include supplementary events that are triggered because of an earlier event. The main anomaly that triggered the related events is identified as the key anomaly. For example, when a port on a switch goes down, the event might generate a number of related anomalies indicating interface issues, cabling issues, route issues, and so on. You can view the key anomaly in the topology diagram on the devices that are impacted.

The Impact Analysis feature thus enables administrators to quickly identify the root cause of an issue and resolve it so that the related anomalies also might get resolved. This enables network administrators to reduce the mean time to resolution (MTTR), which in turn helps improve application user experience.

You can use the filter on the page to examine how a specific service performed during the selected time period. The Anomalies tab in the right pane displays the current anomalies in the devices in the network and the time the anomalies are generated. The Changes tab displays the changes in the network topology, such as addition or removal of a device.

Figure 1 shows the Impact Analysis page displaying how the nodes in the data center network are connected to the clients and how an anomaly in a data center device can impact the clients.

Figure 1: Impact Analysis Page Impact Analysis Page

You can simulate failure scenarios to identify potential impact of an issue in the data center network. You just need to select a device in the network and click Fail scenario. Apstra Cloud Services generates a visualization of how clients and services will be impacted if an issue occurs in the device. Thus, network administrators can use the impact analysis feature to analyze the impact of a network issue, and also to identify which component in the network is causing issues to the application traffic. Instead of providing generic solutions to troubleshoot issues, the Impacts Analysis feature helps administrators to pinpoint specific issues in the data center network that affect application user experience.

Figure 2 shows how an issue in the device apstra-fabric-001-leaf1 can impact the clients connected to it.

Figure 2: Simulate Failure Scenario Simulate Failure Scenario

In addition to these information, you can also view details of specific nodes in the topology. Click a node to view details of the node in the right pane. The displayed information includes CPU and memory utilization and details of transmitted and received packets on each interface on the device as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Device Information Device Information
Note:

You must import a probe for each blueprint in the Juniper Apstra instance to enable sending of CPU and memory utilization data to Juniper Apstra Cloud Services. For more information, see Import a CPU and Memory Probe in Juniper Apstra in Juniper Apstra Cloud Services Edge Setup Guide.

In summary, the Impact Analysis page provides comprehensive information that helps administrators identify and resolve anomalies that impact the clients and services utilizing the network.

Benefits of Impact Analysis

  • Enables administrators to map application issues to issues in the data center network, enabling faster resolution issues minimizing the impact on end user experience.

  • Helps reduce the mean time to resolution (MTTR) of data center issues, enhancing end user experience.

  • Helps quickly identify the potential impact of network events on clients and services utilizing the network.