ACE

Optimizing Application Performance


"Through 2005, more than 80
percent of application perform-
ance and availability failures
will be blamed on network
problems, but the network will
represent less than 20 percent
of the root cause (0.7 probability)."
– Gartner Symposium
“OPNET’s products paid for
themselves in just a few
months. OPNET’s advanced
troubleshooting technology
enabled us to avoid unneces-
sary costs and to focus our
limited resources more
effectively.”
Nick Dauphinais
Manager
Network Performance
and Capacity Planning
FleetBoston
Optimizing Application Performance
Today's enterprises rely heavily on networked applications to conduct business both internally and with
their customers. Yet, complaints about poorly performing applications are common, and the
time to resolve such problems can extend for months, years, or even indefinitely. New
application deployments are also frequently hindered by performance problems.
Performance of networked applications depends on complex interactions
among applications, servers, and networks. IT organizations need a
detailed, quantitative understanding of these interactions to effi-
ciently and cost-effectively troubleshoot and deploy applications.
OPNET's Application Characterization Environment (ACE) direct-
ly addresses these challenges.
ACE embeds expert knowledge about how applications,
networks, and servers operate. ACE enables you to cap-
Expedite the resolution
ture, filter, and synchronize application traces from mul-
of application
tiple network segments. Automatically merge any
number of application traces and interpret them in a performance problems.
combined view. Visualize end-to-end application
transaction dynamics graphically, from both network-
layer and application-layer perspectives. Diagnose
problems automatically with AppDoctor and the Solve problems cost-effectively
industry's most comprehensive application and pro- by understanding the
tocol decode engine. Validate your approach to
impact of changes.
achieving required performance levels with OPNET's
best-in-class prediction technology.
These key features expedite the resolution of perform-
ance problems, boosting the productivity of the IT organ-
ization and the entire enterprise.
Return on Investment
Increase Effectiveness of IT Operations
Quickly identify the root-cause of poor performance with a
unique view of the interactions between applications and
their deployment environments.
Avoid Costly Re-configuration or Re-programming After Deployment
Validate changes in a virtual environment before spending time and money
in the wrong places.
Reduce the Risk of Application Deployment Failures
ACE bridges organizational gaps between developers and teams that manage network and
server performance, increasing uptime and reducing “finger pointing.”
Ensure End-user Satisfaction With Optimized Application Performance
Detailed analysis enables required service levels to be met, and realistic expectations to be set.
Capture
Application Traces
Capture a "fingerprint" of your application transaction,
as it traverses the infrastructure. Install remote Capture
Agents and acquire application traces right at your
desktop. Merge multiple trace files of the same
transaction from multiple segments to automatically
calculate delays.

Visualize
Transactions
Visualize application transaction
flows both at the application level
and the network packet level. Under-
stand the interactions and dependen-
cies among clients, the network,
application servers, and database
servers.

Diagnose
Performance Problems
Identify and diagnose performance
bottlenecks with AppDoctor's auto-
matic diagnostic reports. Decode
captured application information,
for example, to see the exact SQL
statements that cause unaccept-
able processing delays.

Validate
Solutions
Quickly evaluate the impact of changing bandwidth,
protocol settings, application behavior, server speed, and
network congestion on end-to-end response times.
Deploy applications in OPNET's virtual environment to
quantify the impact on network and server utilization.

“OPNET IT Guru and ACE have
identified bottlenecks attributed
to application packet sizing and
capacity thresholds with server
processors as well as conflicting
applications. These accurate
diagnostics were instrumental in
preventing costly network
upgrades and extensive server
replacements. In each of these
instances, prior to OPNET, the
initial indicators pointed to the
network as the root cause while
all of the metrics and measure-
ments of the network indicated
sufficient available bandwidth.”
Russ Rodrigues
VP, Business Technology Planning
Banknorth Group, Inc.
ACE transforms the trace file into an
Application Message Chart and a Net-
work Packet Chart for a full picture of
your application's performance.
APPLICATION MESSAGE CHART
shows the application requests and
responses between the server and
the client. In this example, the server
is sending a large application
message to the client.
NETWORK PACKET CHART
shows packets at the network level.
In this example, a large application
message is composed of many
network packets.
Identify specific transactions
responsible for bottlenecks.
Capture Application Traces
ACE analyzes application transactions from your testbed or production network by directly capturing packet
trace files or by importing traces from popular network analyzers, including from Sniffer and NetScout prod-
ucts, and from utilities such as tcpdump.
The ACE packet capture utility greatly simplifies the process of acquiring application transactions from your
network. ACE's Capture Agents are easy to install from a CD, from the web, or from an email attachment sent
to a remote location. ACE allows you to capture traces of application transactions on a wide variety of plat-
forms including: Windows (95/98/ME/NT/2000), Solaris, Linux, HPUX, and AIX.
MANAGE CAPTURE AGENTS
From the central ACE Capture Manager console, with one click, you can simultaneously trigger collection by mul-
tiple agents. End-to-end transactions can then be analyzed from different independent network segments.
INTEGRATE WITH APPLICATION MONITORING
The OPNET Distributed Agent Controller (DAC) Module, priced separately from ACE, enables capturing multi-tier
application traces using the free OPNET Capture Agents without the ACE Capture Manager. DAC is used in con-
junction with synthetic transaction generators that monitor response times in a production network. DAC can
automatically capture and archive traces of scripted application transactions in an unattended mode. These
archived packet traces can now be used to analyze, using OPNET's ACE Module, performance problems that
are intermittent or that cannot be easily reproduced. Typical commercial synthetic transaction generators that
DAC integrates with include: Mercury Topaz and Loadrunner, Segue SilkVision, and IBM Rational Robot.
SYNCHRONIZE MULTIPLE TRACES
ACE is unique in its ability to automatically syn-
chronize multiple application traces of the same
transaction across different network segments.
This essential feature makes ACE best-in-class at
visualizing and diagnosing the root-cause of end-
to-end performance problems for multi-tier appli-
cations. This feature is especially useful in
distributed production environments that prevent
full capture of transactions from a single loca-
tion.
Visualize Transactions

ACE enables you to visualize application behavior by parsing an application trace file consisting of transac-
tions captured from a test-bed or a production network. ACE then graphically reconstructs application behav- “If you consider the time that
ior on any network segment into intuitive, powerful diagrams. ACE displays transactions at both the application we’re saving end-users, the
message level and network packet level to provide a clear view of the important dynamics. amount of CPU utilization we
cut, and the speed with which
Transaction visualization facilitates the quick resolution of performance problems in complex applications, we got the problem solved, you
before or after deployment. can see how a solution like ACE
can pay for itself pretty quickly."
ISOLATE APPLICATION MESSAGE FLOWS
Decompose the application transaction to collect Jack Mundale
Communications Network Specialist
information such as application data, protocol US Coast Guard
overhead, error messages, retransmissions, and Operations Systems Center

inter-arrival times.

VISUALIZE APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

View end-to-end behavior across an n-tier network.
Graph system performance statistics at problem-
atic tiers. Understand cause and effect by drilling
down to individual messages.

UNDERSTAND DEPENDENCIES IMPACTING

PERFORMANCE
ACE graphically displays the dependencies among Isolate specific conversation pairs using advanced
graphical filtering mechanisms.
application messages. This accurately pinpoints
processing delays.

View transactions between

application tiers to identify
performanceproblems. ACE
supports multiple application tiers.

“As it turns out, expensive
upgrades were not required.
By optimizing server configura-
tion and TCP settings, network
resource efficiency was doubled,
and average response time
reduced by more than 10%.”
"OPNET's software enables us
to avoid unnecessary costs and
improve application perform-
ance."
Jun-Min Liu
District Manager
Business Solutions
AT&T
AppDoctor Diagnosis
explains specific
sources of delay,
and provides
recommendations.
Diagnose Performance Problems
In addition to powerful visualization capabilities, ACE enables several techniques for diagnosing end-to-end
performance problems. ACE applies expert knowledge to captured application data for automated trou-
bleshooting. Sources of delay are summarized in convenient diagrams. Thresholds for key application sta-
tistics are used to generate informative repor ts that characterize problems. ACE also provides
recommendations that support fine-tuning of specific application and network parameters for achieving
improved performance levels.
SUMMARIZE COMPONENTS OF DELAY
ACE generates summary reports that clearly show the factors that contribute to end-to-end response time,
including transmission, propagation, network congestion, protocol overhead, and processing on each appli-
cation tier.
AUTOMATE DIAGNOSIS OF PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
ACE automatically analyzes each application tier to generate a summary of potential bottlenecks. Find out,
for example, if "chattiness" or TCP windowing between a specific client and server are causing bottlenecks.
ANALYZE APPLICATION STATISTICS
ACE’s reports include a broad range of important numerical statistics for each application, including pro-
cessing delays, network delays, response times, number of application turns, number of application mes-
sages, and more.
DECODE PROBLEMATIC TRANSACTIONS
The ACE Decode Module (ADM), priced separately from ACE, significantly increases the value of ACE with the
industry's most comprehensive application and protocol decode engine (from Sniffer Technologies). Decode
over 400 protocols and applications, including database applications (Oracle, Sybase, MS-SQL Server);
Citrix, HTTP, FTP, Email (SMTP, POP3); Novell (IPX and NetWare 5); Microsoft (SMB, NetBIOS, MSRPC, net-
BEUI); Sun NFS and RPC; Cisco (routing and VLAN).
Share information with team
members and management
using ACE Web reports.
Validate Solutions

Used with OPNET's IT Guru or SP Guru, ACE provides visibility into the performance of applications in different
deployment environments. IT Guru and SP Guru offer advanced analytical modeling for quick results, as well “Organizations benefit significant-
as advanced hybrid simulation technology to facilitate more sophisticated analysis of response times in var- ly by simulating and then optimiz-
ious “what-if” scenarios. ing performance of applications
prior to implementation, cutting
RECODE POORLY WRITTEN the high costs of system down-
APPLICATIONS "VIRTUALLY" time and lagging access of poorly
Evaluate the impact of changes to application design optimized applications when the
performance using QuickRecode. system actually goes live.”

PREDICT IMPACT -- META

OF CHANGES TO NETWORK CONDITIONS
ACE's QuickPredict feature provides quick analysis of
the impact of key network parameters such as latency,
bandwidth, packet loss, congestion, and TCP window
sizes on application response times.

VALIDATE INFRASTRUCTURE READINESS

FOR NEW DEPLOYMENTS
The ACE Wizard offers an easy, intuitive approach to
create models in IT Guru or SP Guru using captured
application trace information. Automatically create base-
line models to analyze "what-if" scenarios to optimize
performance.

Using OPNET IT Guru and SP Guru, analyze end-to-end performance, and take into consideration the complex OPNET IT Guru and SP Guru predict SLA
compliance with increasing application
relationships among protocols, network devices, servers, and applications. Evaluate end-to-end response
usage over time.
times; optimize server placements; analyze the impact of increasing application usage; and verify conformance
to Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Quickly make changes to your virtual network and/or application models,
and then deploy your application in the production environment with confidence.

Use ACE to evaluate the impact of

application rollouts on existing
mission-critical applications.
About OPNET Technologies, Inc. Enterprise Customers (partial list)

20th Century Fox MA Water Resource Authority

Abbott Laboratories Merck
ABN AMRO National Semiconductor
Accenture NCR
ATOFINA Petrochemicals Northern Trust Company
American Water Works Office Depot
Ashland Inc. Oracle
Avery Dennison PacifiCare
OPNET Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of management Bally Total Fitness PeopleSoft
Bank of Montreal Petro-Canada
Bank of Oklahoma Pier 1 Imports
Baptist Healthcare Prudential
software for networks and applications. OPNET's best-in-class BB&T Radio Shack
Blue Cross Blue Shield RR Donnelley
Capital One Financial Safeway
solutions address: application performance troubleshooting; Charles Schwab & Co. Saudi Aramco
Chevron Texaco Schneider Electric
Citigroup Schlumberger
application deployment planning; systems capacity planning; Coach Southern California Edison
Coca-Cola Sun Life Assurance
Continental Airlines State Street
network configuration auditing; network capacity and resiliency CP Ships Sunrise Assisted Living
CSX Technology SunTrust Banks
Cummins Engine Company Target
CVS Pharmacy Thomson Financial
planning; and network technology R&D. OPNET solutions have DaimlerChrysler TIAA-CREF
Entergy TotalFinaElf
Ernst & Young TransCanada Pipeline
been operationally proven in thousands of customer environ- Family Dollar Stores Inc T. Rowe Price
Federated Mutual Insurance TXU
FleetBoston Financial Tyco Electronics
ments worldwide, including corporate enterprises, government First American Financial Unisys
First Citizens Bank UnitedHealth Group
GMAC Residential Mortgage VARCO
Groupe Accor/Siege VF Services
and defense agencies, network service providers, and network
Heinz Visa International
IBM Global Services Vision Service Plan
Independence Blue Cross Wachovia
manufacturers. For more information about OPNET and its Kemper Insurance Wal-Mart
Las Vegas Water Valley District Waste Management
Markel Corporation Xerox
products, visit www.opnet.com Mary Kay Zions Bank

Awards
Network Computing Winner of the
Company to Watch 2004 SUPERQuest Award
for Best E-Business Solution
at SUPERCOMM

FORBES
Best 2003
OPNET Recognized
for Financial Performance
Winner of NetworkWorld’s
OPNET Technologies, Inc. Best of the Tests Award
7255 Woodmont Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland 20814 USA
phone: +1 (240) 497-3000
fax: +1 (240) 497-3001
Winner at Networld+Interop
and COMDEX 2002
email: info@opnet.com
Best of Show
NASDAQ: OPNT

www.opnet.com
The OPNET application packet capture utility includes software developed by the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, © 2004 OPNET Technologies, Inc. OPNET, IT Guru, SP Guru, and OPNET Technologies are trademarks or service marks of OPNET.
and its contributors, as well as software developed by the Politecnico di Torino, and its contributors. Other trademarks or service marks appearing in this document are the property of their respective holders.