Capacity planning

Use throughput graphs, driver statistics, and the SNMP GET request from the Network IPS appliance to gather information for capacity planning.

Throughput graphs

Throughput graphs show the sum of traffic, in megabits, into or going out of your network. Throughput graphs also show the totals for unanalyzed traffic and secured traffic that is moving through your network. Unanalyzed traffic is not inspected by the Protocol Analysis Module (PAM). Secured traffic is inspected by PAM, but does not necessarily mean that the traffic is suspect. You can customize these graphs to show statistics for an hour, a day, a week, or a month. Choose the time period that best helps you to view the capacity of traffic and analysis on your appliance.

Find throughput graphs in Monitor Health and Statistics > Network.

Driver statistics

Driver statistics help with capacity planning because they report the totals for secured traffic, unanalyzed traffic, packets received, and packets that are transmitted for drivers. The four specific driver statistics that help with capacity planning are:
  • adapter.bytes.secured: Lists the total number of bytes secured.
  • adapter.bytes.unanalyzed: Lists the total number of bytes unanalyzed.
  • adapter.0.packets.received: Lists the number of packets that are received on adapter 0 (adapter A).
  • adapter.0.packets.transmitted: Lists the number of packets transmitted (forwarded from inline partner or injected) on adapter 0 (adapter A).

Find driver statistics in Monitor Health and Statistics > Network.

SNMP GET request and the MIB file

The SNMP GET request helps with capacity planning because you can configure it to retrieve statistics from the management information base (MIB) file. The MIB file includes information about these items:
  • network.driver.stats: Contains all of the statistics that are found in Monitor Health and Statistics > Network > Network Driver Statistics.
  • protection.analysis.stats: Contains all of the statistics that are found in Monitor Health and Statistics > Security > Protection Analysis Statistics.
  • network.protection.stats: Contains all of the statistics that are found in Monitor Health and Statistics > Security > Network Protection Statistics.
  • ipmi.chassis.status (for GX7000 series appliances only): Contains information about the status of the chassis along with information about power failures and driver failures. You can view this status in the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI).
Configure the SNMP GET request in Manage System Settings > Appliance > SNMP. Then, use an SNMP tool to get the MIB file contents from MIB: NET-SNMP-EXTEND-MIB:nsExtendOutput1Table.
Note: This capacity planning feature is available only when the SNMP GET request is enabled and configured.