Data center network analysis tools

Data center network analysis tools

The network is the most important component of the data center. Once a network problem occurs, various services are often affected. However, the analysis of network problems requires not only a wealth of network technical knowledge, but also a handy tool. As the saying goes, "It's hard to make it easy." A strong network expert also needs to clarify the problem based on the obtained network information. Therefore, it is necessary to have some network analysis tools. By using these analysis tools, the brain can be liberated and the test data can be analyzed to determine the problem. Today, the network size of data centers is constantly expanding, and it is not uncommon for data centers with hundreds or even thousands of network devices to find faulty equipment or even internal equipment faults from these running network devices, it is as difficult as a haystack, and using some analysis tools on hand can greatly reduce the troubleshooting time. Next we will introduce several useful network analysis tools to you, used in network O & M and fault analysis.

IP translation tools

These tools are translation tools for public IP addresses. You only need to enter any IP addresses to know which region and country these IP addresses belong. For example, the pure IP address database tool. In addition, if you perform mask translation on IP addresses, you can quickly know the IP address range and whether the mask configuration is inappropriate. IP addresses are important information used to identify network devices. By analyzing IP addresses, you can quickly find out where the IP addresses you are concerned about are from and whether they are normal. For example, if the data center is attacked by an IP address, you can know which country the IP address belongs to through translation, and then further verify to obtain the exact location of the attack source. IP addresses are massive, and these tools can quickly find the desired results, which is very useful for network analysis.

Network path Check Tool

The data center network contains many devices. The path check tools must be used to identify which device has encountered a problem. The most common tools are itracert and ping. Itracert uses a Raw socket to implement the Program programming environment. The difference between ICMP-based route tracing and PING is that tracert needs to respond to every hop router device in the middle of the destination link, tracert can be used to check whether the network device of each hop can be reached and the specific device. PING can only determine whether the network path of the target address is accessed, however, you cannot know which devices are going along the road. If there is a problem with the device, you cannot find the device by using the Tracert command. Many similar tools are derived based on the network protocols tracert and ping, such as visualized multiping, fast ping, and xping. These tools make the results displayed in tracert and ping processes more intuitive and easy to use. As a network technician, you must master tracert and ping tools and make full use of them in problem analysis. Tracert uses the ICMP protocol to implement route tracing. In this way, some other tools are derived, such as the TCPing tool for TCP port detection. Different network protocols are used to obtain network interconnection information.

Packet capture tool

Most of the time, we know that the network fault point is only the beginning of the problem analysis. To verify the cause of the problem, we must analyze it in depth. In this case, it is critical to analyze the network traffic. Before packet capture, you must first configure the VLAN or image packet capture command on the network device to introduce traffic to the packet capture device. Common packet capture tools, such as Sniffer, Windump, and wireshark, can be used to translate captured network traffic. These tools have the ability to parse packets, not only for visual display, it also supports filtering and display, filtering packet capture, displaying the meaning of each segment of the Message Protocol, and checking the correctness of the Message format. When a network fault occurs, you can capture packets to obtain detailed information about the Failover traffic interaction. corresponding to the communication standards stipulated in the Protocol, you can quickly identify the device where the problem exists, where is the protocol Interaction Problem.

Network Traffic Analysis Tools

Faults reported by many network problems in the data center are always the same, either slow or disconnected. Although the fault phenomenon is single, there are a variety of causes for this phenomenon. At this time, we need to analyze the traffic of the entire network so as to identify what is wrong with the network. This type of problem often involves many aspects, which can be identified without simple PING and Tracert. To analyze the overall network traffic, you need to use the network traffic analysis tool. There are a lot of such tools, such as NetTank, NADetector, Windump, Cacti, and NetFlow Analyzer. What these tools share is the use of snmp mib nodes, obtain Internet port traffic from all network devices. Then, use these tools to draw one-dimensional or multi-dimensional images. analyze and compare these traffic images to find abnormal locations, in particular, the comparison and analysis before and during the fault often can quickly identify the cause of the problem.

In addition to the above network analysis tools, many network technicians have designed and developed their own special gadgets, such as the HASH algorithm tool and the IP address decimal and hexadecimal conversion tools, there are also some analysis tools for specific network devices. Using these tools is very helpful for analyzing network problems. Many tools are accumulated from the valuable experience accumulated by our predecessors and are very practical. There are also some tools, such as large network management tools, equipment inspection tools and other high-tech tools. These tools are closely integrated with specific equipment and developed by professional network equipment companies, private technology implementation. These tools are generally paid software and need to be purchased and used by customers. These tools can often provide special functions not available in other tools, which is naturally convenient for network analysis, especially for those large core network devices.

Network Analysis tools are the means. With these tools, troubleshooting time can be greatly reduced, but the problem cannot be solved. In the end, the solution to the network problem of the data center depends on the in-depth thinking of the technical staff. After a large amount of network running status information is obtained through these tools, network technicians can determine the location of network problems and conduct in-depth analysis on problematic devices to quickly find the cause. Therefore, network analysis tools are the accelerators used to analyze network problems, but they are not the tools used to solve network problems. While mastering the use of these analysis tools, you still need to constantly learn network protocol knowledge, expand your knowledge so that you can handle network problems easily.