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Cisco Systems, Inc.

All c ontents are Copyright 2002 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Important Notic es and Privacy Statement.

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White Paper

Cost Analysis Using CiscoWorks LAN M anagement Solution

Introduction

As networks grow in both size and complexity, the need for network management increases

greatly. Many organizations, however, continue to rely on costly, repetitive, and error-prone

processes in which operat ors resort to the primitive technique of manu ally managing the

devices in the network . In tod ays business environment, the Cisco netwo rk management

productswhich automate these proceduresmake both financial and practical sense. But

without bottom-line evidence, network managers and decision makers may be reluctant to

invest in network management products.

As with any capital expenditure, the benefitsprovided by CiscoWorks network management

products must ou tweigh the investment required. O ne way to p rovide evidence of these

benefits is to compar e the cost savings of using Cisco network management pr oducts to a

traditional, manual approach.

It is difficult to p rovide a har d and fast algorithm to calculate exact savings, because there

are ma ny variables involved, ranging from expertise of existing staff, current policies and

procedures, and t he level of man agement desired. H owever, it is possible to calculate an

approximate value based on commonly performed network management tasks and

assumptions about some fixed variables.

The on line Cisco Cost Analysis Tool at tempts to bridge this gap b y estimating cost savings

based on a set of assumed parameters and variables determined by the user. This paper is a

companion piece to the online Cost Analysis calculator and explains the rationale and

methodology used by the tool to produce the analysis.

Note that the calculations do not take into account the soft costs, such as the cost of

having an individual spend time on ro utine manual tasks, the savings achieved by not

requiring additional staff, or the impact of poor network performance on brand image.

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Cost Analysis Using CiscoWorks LAN M anagement Solution

Although small networks can be effectively managed by manually accessing each device and meticulously

documenting the results, the same methodology is often impractical and cost-proh ibitive when ap plied to larger

network s. The CiscoWorks family of network ma nagement app lications provides the following benefits to large

networks:

Manual labor reduct ion

Network availability enhancement, through mitigation of network down time and/or degradation due to

device failure

The following sections describe each benefit in detail.

Manual Labor Reduction

Basic network infrastructu re management requ ires the performance of many tasks, such as initial configuration,

monitoring of inventory, software upgrades, and preventive maintenanceof devices. There are three principal benefits

of using CiscoWorks LAN M anagement Solution (LMS) for configuration management:

Significantly reduced preparation time for a given task

Automated distribution of tasks to allow multiple jobs to be run simultaneously

Automated change audit records and inventory tracking

Note that Cisco network management products do not affect the planning time or the time required to process each

job by a given device. Logically planning for an audit, software upgrade, or configuration update is identicalwhether

performed manually or with CiscoWorks. Furt her, there is a p hysical limit to the speed at which a given device can

process a job, whether the request was generated from CiscoWorks or ifit were generated through a manual process

via command-line interface (CLI). In other words, once the What shall we do? is defined, the differences between

manual configuration and automated configuration ar e demonstrated in the H ow shall we do it? ph ase.

While every network requires a different mix of management activity (depending on network criticality, design, use,

and so o n), there are several tasks common t o all managed networks: configuring password changes, distributing

software upgrades; and gathering inventory and change audit information.

Configuring Password Changes

It is a common adm inistrative task to chan ge and enable secret passwords, which allow users to enter the enable

mode on devices. For security purp oses, many administrato rs change device passwords quart erly.

Whether this is done manuallyor through CiscoWorks, advance planningsuch as what to change the password to,

when the devices should be configured, who needs to approve the changes, and so onmust be performed. The

advance time required is identical for both the manu al and au tomat ed processes, so this has not been factored into

the cost savings calculation.

To perform the password changes, the system administrato r must Telnet into each applicable device, make the

requisite password change, logout, and then document the change informationa fairly straightforward process

which should require no more than a few minutes to complete.

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For a small number of devices, changing passwords manually via CLI is effective and practical. However, as the

numb er of devices increases, the opportu nity for human erro r increases dramatically. A study conducted by the

American Management Association has shown that on average,one of 300 characters is mis-typed. The risk for error

is further increased with multiple, simultaneous Telnet sessions to configure a number of devices at one time. Giventheseparameters, it isreasonableto expect anywhere from one-to eight-percent error rate for manual configurations.

CiscoWorks pro vides automatic and simultaneous d istribution of multiple jobs, while automatically updating a

ChangeAudit database. Automation of activities such as changing passwords on all devices dramatically reduces the

time spent: Manual configuration of password changes for 800 devices may take as much as 93 hours annually.

With CiscoWorks, the same process requires only 24 minutes.

SeeAppendix A: Configuring Password Changes for a step-by-step wa lkthrough of this calculation.

Distributing Software Upgrades

Cisco devices contain software that may need periodic updating for op timum performance. Generally, network

administrators search the Cisco.com Web site for updated or upgraded software, and then download the software

to the applicable devices.

Both manual and automated upgrades require several preparatory steps. System administrators should ask the

following questions before attempting an upgrade:

Have the appropriate images containing the minimum required device configurations been located in Cisco.com

Have all of the prerequisites for loading the software on the device been met?

Has theeffect of theupgrade on thenetwork and thenetwork users been considered? (When should theupgrade

occur? In what o rder shou ld the devices be upgraded?)

The cost savings of using CiscoWorks LMS on software up grades is difficult to calculate, as it is heavily dependan t

on factor s such as the network a dministrator s familiarity with C isco.com, the availability of current configuration

information, a nd t he number and var iety of devices in the network . Ho wever, CiscoWorks LM S provides Chan ge

Audit databases, which contain data pertaining to all changes made to devices (hardware and software), and

automatically compare the information to the recommendations from Cisco.com, drastically reducing preparation

time for a software upgrade.

In addition, jobscan be scheduled simultaneously, decreasing the time required for the entirenetwork to be upgraded.

It is important to note that Cisco recommends no more than 12 simultaneous upgrade sessions be scheduled (as

oppo sed to 300 + for password changes). Further, note that t he time required for a device to receive the download

and reboot is identical for both CiscoWorks and CLI manual procedures.

Another key benefit of using CiscoWorks for softwa re distribution is the ability to create scheduled jobs. System

administrators can set up thejob request during normal working hours, and have LMS automatically run therequests

during non-business hours. While the actual time the devices are down may not change, the administrator no longer

has to be constantly available while the upgrades are commencing, conserving valuable work day time.

SeeAppendix B:Distributing Software Images for a walk-through of the CiscoWorks and manual software upgrade

processes.

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Gathering Inventory and Change Audit Inform ation

Adequately documenting the ph ysical devices in a network is a time-consuming task. Th e complexity of the task is

further compoun ded by th e fact that a single device may contain several different b lades or configurations, as well

as many different versions of installed software. There are no short-cuts to conducting a thorough manual

documentation of inventory:Each device, with its components and software, must be examined individually. Further,

there is no easy way to determine whether the inventory has changed without conducting an audit to compare

existing records to that of the actual networkanother daunting and time-consuming task.

The sudden, inexplicable failure of a device can be costly to a company. System administrato rs must analyze the

device in order to discover the cause of the failure. After hardware failure, the most common cause of such failures

is a change in configuration. Perhaps an inexperienced administrator entered the wrong commands, or made

typographical errors. While solving the problem may be simple as returning the device to its original configuration,

unless meticulous records exist that detail who made what changes to which device, arriving at this conclusion and

rectifying the error could tak e many h ours. Because manu ally maintaining records of every physical and logical

change applied to a given device isboth impractical and time-consuming, system administrators rarely havethis kindof documentation on hand.

CiscoWorks LM S, however, au toma tically records every change applied to a d evicewhether by CiscoWorks

applications or via CLIin the ChangeAudit database. This process istransparent to the administrator, and requires

no additional time or effort on his or her behalf.

Gathering inventory data using LMS is equally simple and fast. CiscoWorks LMS has th e ability to simultaneously

access each managed device and obtain both hardware and software information, providing far more efficient and

accurate records than can be manually maintained or created.

For further information on the Change Audit function, seeAppendix C: Gathering Inventory and Change Audit

Information.

Network Availability Enhancement

In ord er to d etermine the level of fault ma nagement necessary, system administrators must ask how mu ch does

network dow ntime or network degradation cost their company?

When determining cost of downtime or degradation, lost productivity and lost revenue must be taken into account.

A studyconducted by Infonetics, Inc., an international market research company, showed that network degradations

result in an approximate 16 percent loss of networked worker productivity and a 10 percent loss in revenue, as a

result of the d ecreased productivity of revenue-prod ucing employees. If the networ k were to be down completely,

these figures increase to 24 percent lost p rodu ctivity from netwo rked employees and revenue loss of as much as 60

percent. A compa ny with 10 00 employees and annual revenues of $200 million, as an example, could suffer losses

that easily surpass $8000 per hour. (SeeAppendix D: Availability Enhancement using LM S+DFM).

Fault management isa crucial component of any network management scheme to minimizeor eliminatesuch losses.

CiscoWorks LMS (with Device Fault Manager as an add-on) can serve as a key element in such an environment.

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While it is importan t to quickly pinpo int trouble areas, it is equally import ant to prevent such prob lems from

occurring in the first place. Device Fault Manager (DFM), a component of LMS, actively monitors Cisco devices and

reports on any problems it detects. Depending on the type of device, DFM actively monitors different conditions via

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) polling, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) managementinformation base (MIB) interrogation, and SNMP trap reception. The DFM then tracks only those conditions known

to cont ribute to higher-level problems in that part icular device. When used with Real-Time Monitor

(RTM)another LMS component which provides both real-time and historical RMON and RMON 2 reportsthe

DFM can spot problems before they become crit ical and bring down the network. Given the above cost of network

degradation, this proactive fault not ification featur e alone can easily pay for the cost of LMS. (SeeAppendix D:

Availability Enhancementusing LMS+DFM for more information on DFM and RTM ).

Although LMS is a component o f a comprehensive fault management system, it does not pr ovide complete,

system-wide functionality by themselves. For example, a completefault management schemewould monitor servers,

users, applications, links, as well as the network devices. LMS can be integrated with such comprehensive systems

by providing in-depth information on the network devices to the system management platform (such as HP

OpenView Network Nod e Manager).

Conclusion

The CiscoWorks product family can provide a quantifiable financial and IT benefit to an organization, through the

automation of rou tine labor, as well as helping to mitigate network degradation due to device failures. While it is

difficult to derivean exact figure of the trueand potential cost savings for every customer situation, the Cost Analysis

Tool can provide an understanding of the scale of savings involved. At this point, the question that needs to be asked

is not What is the cost of the product? but What is the cost of NOT using CiscoWorks?

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Appendix A : Configuring Password Changes

Assuming 800 devices that require quarterly password changes and a manual configuration error rate of 5 percent,

the time spent per quar ter on p assword chan ges is calculated as:

Assuming that the system administrator can open up three simultaneous Telnet sessions and configure these devices

simultaneously, the process will still take 23 hours per quar ter (or 93 hour s per year) to complete. Although it is

possible to open up more than three simultaneous Telnet sessions, the rate of erro r will consequently rise as well.

Comp are the time required to cond uct the same procedure using CiscoWorks LAN M anagement Solution (LMS).

The following steps were taken in setting up LMS to conduct simultaneous password changes in ba tches of 300

configured devices: (Note that the product has been tested for up to 700 simultaneous batches.)

1. Log into the CiscoWorks management console.

2. Click on Resource Manager Essentials/Configuration Management/NetConfig.

3. Select N ew Jobs from the Jobs Menu.

800 devices x 5 min x 1.05 = 4200 min (70 hours)/qtr

= 280 hours/year

Simultaneous configuration of three devices with multiple Telnet sessions

= 280 ho urs/year / 3 = 93.3 hours/year

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4. Select Device Category from the pull-down menu (Cisco IOS software, FastSwitch, or Catalyst), click Next.

5. Select the devices that require password changes.

6. Apply the Enable Password system-defined template from the pulldown menu.

7. Select devices from the pull-down menu, click N ext.

8. Set job properties (such as schedule, notification, failure policy, and pa rallel/serial configurat ion jobs).

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9. Review job content, then click Finish.

The abovesteps in the netconfigwizard should take an experienced operator approximatelyfive minutesto complete.

Although an additionalthreeminutes is required for LMS to Telnet into each devicemake the requisite changes, then

logout, th is time is immaterial to the administrator. (Note, h owever, tha t CiscoWorks processes the device changes

simultaneously, so th e three-minute-per-device configuration time is not cumulative). In o ther words, once the job

setup is complete and the Finish button is clicked, the operators work is done (unless an error message is generated

as configured in the Job Properties step).

Given these figures, using LMS to configure quart erly password changes on a 800-device network in which 300

devices are configured simultaneously, the a mount o f time required per year can b e calculated as follows:

When an password is enabled or disabled, the change information is automatically sent as an update to the

CiscoWorks inventory database. As a result, there is no need for a manual documentation to track how/when/who

concerning the password change, which saves additional system administration time.

Given t he above assumptions, using CiscoWorks LMS for pa ssword changes saves:

(800 devices/ 300 devices at once) x 5 minutes to configure = 13.3 min (0.22 hrs)/qtr

= 0.89 hr s/yr

Manual process: 93.3hours/ year

Using LMS: 0.9 hours/ year

Saved time: 92.4 hours/ year

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Appendix B: Distr ibuting Software Images

The man ual process for distributing software upgrad es is extremely time-consuming, especially in the p reparat ion

and initial research phases. A typical manual procedure for a software upgra de is outlined below:

1. Determine current device image revisions. If the administrator kept meticulous records, this step should be fairly

simple. Without these records, it is impossible to proceed with a software image upgrade. Although obtaining

device information is a simple procedure, it is still no small task to obtain a current and accurate report if a large

number of devices, or mu ltiple device types (for example, a mix of Catalyst 6500 switches, 3600 ro uters, and

7200 routers) are involved, It may only take three minutes per device to get the required data, but recording the

information is a serial task when done manually.

2. Log on to Cisco.com and find the appropriate software image to determine whether an upgrade image is

available. Thisstep requiresonly five to ten minutesper image, provided the system administrator isfamiliar with

the naming conventions of Cisco IOSSoftware, the Cisco.com Web site, and is familiar with the required version

number and feature sets.

3. Determine whether the destination device satisfies the minimum requirements specified on Cisco.com. If the

administrator has kept meticulous inventory records of the devices on the networks, this information should

already be available, but as mentioned above, this is rare. In add ition, the amou nt of time required increases

greatly if there are multiple hardware device configurat ions and device types on the network .

4. Download the image and reboot the device. Often, to prevent downtimes from affecting network users, upgrades

are performed a fter business hours. While administrato rs may conduct the activities from a r emote location

(home as opposed to office), it still requires that th ey be online during off hou rs.

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Compare this to thetimerequired to conduct thesamepreparation using CiscoWorksLMS. Thefollowing steps were

taken in setting up LMS to distribute softwa re images to the devices.

1. Log into the CiscoWorks management console.

2. Select Resource Manager Essentials/Software management/Distribution/Cisco.com Upgrade Analysis and select

the filtering criteria. Filters can b e selected from on e or more o f the following:

Images newer than running image

Same image feature subset as running image

General deployment

Latest maintenance release (of each major release)

3. Next, select the devices to be ana lyzed. In this case, we have chosen to an alyze Cisco IOS Software versions for

Cisco 2600, 3600, a nd IO S switches. Note that the specific devices in our network that fit the description have

automatically been discovered. Click N ext.

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4. From the drop -down list boxes, select the images to ana lyze, then click Finish.

5. Depending on the number of devices analyzed, within two to five minutes, the Upgrade Analysis report is

generated. This report contains individual, device-specific information indicating whether hardware upgrades are

required, and provides notes on Telnet access requirements. CiscoWorks LMS also obtains up-to-date

information on the specified device configurat ion. Because every change made o n a device (whether via

CiscoWorks or via CLI) is recorded in the Change Audit database, the administrator is assured of obtaining the

most current snapshot of the devices hardware and software configurations. Manual performance of this task,

performed by Telneting into a device and brow sing though C isco.com, would tak e substantially longer.

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6. To distribute the required image upgrad es, select Resource Manager Essentials/Software Management/

Distribution/Distribute Images.

7. Select the devices to upgrade. (Not e that specific devices that fit the search criteria are also aut omatically

discovered.) Click Next t o display a set of upgrade recommendat ions.

8. Select distribution sequence. Note that LM S does not shorten the time required for each device to process the

software upgrade. Further, each upgrade, whether done via CLI or through the LMSgraphicuser interface (GUI),

is performed sequentially.

9. Finally, schedule the upgrad e/reboo t for a time when impact to network users will be minimal.

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Appendix C: Gathering Inventory and Change Audit Inform ation

Any changes implemented on the managed devices, whether by CiscoWorks applications or via CLI are recorded in

the Cha nge Audit databa se. This information is used to generate Change Audit report s (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Generating a Change Audit Report

Changes to CLI

AAA

Changes from CiscoWorks2000periodic scans or scheduled jobs

Change AuditReports

SyslogDatabase

SyslogAnalyzer

ConfigurationManager

InventoryManager

SoftwareManager

1 2

InventoryDatabase

Change AuditDatabase

AllSyslogEvents

AllSyslogEvents

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Appendix D : Avai labi l i ty Enhancement Using CiscoWorks LMS+D FM

Calculate the cost of network degradation as follows:

How Can CiscoWorks LMS Help?

The Device Fault Manager, a component of LMS, provides real-time, detailed fault analysis, designed specifically for

Cisco devices. DFM actively monitors a wide range of Cisco devices. Depending on the type of device, DFM actively

monitors different conditions via ICMP polling, SNM P MIB interrogation, and SNM P trap reception, and track only

those conditions known to result in higher-level problems. When used with RTM, the DFM provides both real-timeand historical RMON and RMON2 reports, and can spot problems before they becomecrit ical and bring down the

network.

Productivity Loss Assumptions:

Number of networked employees: 1000

Average salary: $40/hr

Productivity loss due to network degradat ion 16 percent (as reported by Infonet ics)

Productivity loss cost due to degradation: $6400/ hr

Revenue Loss Assumptions:

Annual revenue: $200 million

Hourly revenue: $104,000

($200 million divided by 48, 40-hour weeks)

Percentage o f netwo rked employees directlygenerating revenue: 44% (as reported by Infonetics)

Hourly revenue impacted by network: $45,700

Revenue loss due to network degradation: 10%

Revenue loss cost due to degradation: $4570/hr

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All contents are Copyright 2002CiscoSystems,Inc.All rightsreserved. Catalyst, Cisco, Cisco IOS, Cisco Systems, the Cisco Systemslogo, and Fast Step are registered trademarksof Cisco Systems, Inc.and/or its affiliatin the U.S. and certain other countries.

All o ther trademarks mentioned in th is document or Web site are the proper tyof their respective owners. The useof the word par tner does not imply a par tnership relationship between Cisco and any other company(0203R)

Further, once problems are identified, resolution efforts are greatly aided by th e detailed and current informa tion

stored in the Change Audit database. This database contains information on device software image, hardware

configuration, as well as a record of who made what changes at what time. This database is updated regardless of

whether a change wasmade manuallyor ifit wasdone through a Cisco GUI,so theadministrator hasthe most current

information available. Other tools, such as path analysisand topology views, can also help pinpoint a problem locale

for a faster recovery.

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