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  • 1.  Cisco PFC QoS statistics

    Posted Jan 19, 2015 06:41 AM

    Hi all

    We have a customer with PFC QoS configured on their Cisco infrastructure and we are wondering how to monitor for QoS statistics using any of the CA suite. If anyone has any experience with this I would appreciate your input.

     

    For info PFC QoS is described here http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6500/ios/12-2SX/configuration/guide/book/qos.html

     

    PFC QoS does not populate the ciscoCBQosMIB so does not create QoS models in Spectrum or QoS components in PM. We have run mib walks against multiple devices to prove this. I understand the reason for this is that it does not require QoS class and policy maps to be created using Modular QoS CLI (MQC) hence no ciscoCBQosMIB data.

     

    PFC QoS does provide a statistics data export mechanism described here http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6500/ios/12-2SX/configuration/guide/book/qos_sde.html however I don’t know if that has been integrated into the CA suite.

     

    Answers to any of the following questions would be very helpful…

     

    Does anyone know if it is possible to get the ciscoCBQosMIB populated in a PFC QoS environment?

    Is it possible to use PFC QoS SDE to get stats into NFA?

    Is there some other way?

     

    If anyone from CA has a comment on any integration (current or future) I would appreciate that also.

     

    Regards, John



  • 2.  Re: Cisco PFC QoS statistics

    Posted Jan 19, 2015 08:00 AM

    Hi,

     

    We had to build a system that would do something similar with what you're asking for. We had to give support for QoS for Cisco ME3400 and Cisco 6500. These were not providing the QoS information over SNMP, instead using CLI. Basically it's the same situation as yours.

     

    This is how we did it:

    - new import module created in eHealth.

    - custom element types for this information to be imported in eHealth.

    - custom collector that would connect to each 3400 and 6500, extract the information using CLI, produce DCI and DDI files, importing it after in eHealth. This is actually written in Java, to speed up everything and have better control.

    - Trend/TopN reports created based on the data that is fed into the system.

     

    Input for the collector that we're using is the list of interfaces that have QoS information enabled exported from eHealth system. Basically we have a group that contains all the interfaces that should be monitored for QoS information using CLI. All elements of type interface in that group (TO_MONITOR_QOS) are candidates for QoS data collection.

     

    It's not fully automated, as you have to import new DDI files once changes are made to the list of monitored interfaces (addition specially). There is an importSample module created just as an example on how an Import Module should be created in eHealth. You can create in the TCL script used in the module some kind of logic to automate also import of DDI files once the import module runs. The same applies for exporting contents of the group (TO_MONITOR_QOS), you can create an schedule eHealth job that will export all contents of the group in the right folder, where the collector reads the input data. At the time of the implementation we choose to do it like this, not 100% automated. There's always room for improvement.

     

    We choose one of the existing element types as based for ours.

     

    Catalin.



  • 3.  Re: Cisco PFC QoS statistics

    Posted Jan 19, 2015 10:39 AM

    Catalin

    Thanks for your input. It does sound similar, although I guess with the PFC SDE (Statistics Data Export) it might not require the custom collector in this case. Unfortunately the customer has gone down the PM path rather than eHealth and I'm not sure suggesting eHealth at this stage will be received very well.

     

    Does anyone know is there a way to do this with PM? What I would imagine is that we could use the PFC SDE to export the stats, and then somehow get those stats into PM. I'm having a look through the manuals and I'm not sure the Self Certification and Power User Certification guides cover gathering non-SNMP data. Have I got that right? Are there any other options?

     

    Regards, John