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Observability Overview

The observability use case in Paragon Automation enables you to view your entire network topology, monitor network health, and get notifications of anomalies in the network and network devices. Observability enables you to get actionable insights into the health of your network to identify and to remediate network issues.

Paragon Automation uses telemetry obtained from the network, network devices, and network services to monitor and understand what is happening across the network. Paragon Automation then detects and helps resolve real-time issues to keep the network and its components healthy, delivering an easily sustainable high-quality experience for network operators. Observability is a critical use case of Paragon Automation.

With observability, Network Operations Center (NOC) engineers (typically superusers, network administrators, and observers) have fine-grained visibility and ability to view the network topology, and monitor the health and quality of the network and its components (such as devices, links, and routing protocols) through a single pane of glass UI. Additionally, drill-in views provide detailed information about all network components. Paragon Automation monitors and analyzes network components by using key performance indicators (KPIs), logs, and metrics, and notifies you about network issues through alerts and alarms. You can also choose to receive notifications of network issues using webhooks and over e-mail, which enables you to continue to monitor the network even when you are not logged in to the GUI.

You can use observability for effective day 2 operations of the network. Day 2 operations focus on observing the state of the network and its components and guiding the actions that a network administrator performs on the basis of alerts, alarms, and device system logs to maintain a healthy and operational network.

We explain the different categories of the observability use case in this topic.

Network Observability and Topology Visualization

Paragon Automation provides NOC engineers an up-to-date view of the Layer 3 IP network. You can observe the network and visualize the topology by using the topology map feature. The topology map in the GUI provides an intuitive and multidimensional view of the network topology including sites, devices, and links. In addition, you can also customize the topology map for better visibility and analysis of the network topology. For more information, see Network Visualization Options.

The network information table displays detailed information about network elements in the topology. You can view information about all active devices and the sites where they are deployed, details about the links between the devices, and also the alerts generated on the devices and sites. You can drill-down to individual devices and troubleshoot the alert conditions to maintain a healthy network. For more information, see Network Table Overview.

In addition, Paragon Automation preconfigures and installs test agents on the devices that it manages. Test agents generate synthetic traffic that verify connectivity between the devices in your network topology. You can analyze the results of these connectivity tests to determine and fix any issues.

Device Observability and Troubleshooting

Paragon Automation provides you a detailed view of the devices and the connectivity between the devices in your network. You can monitor the health of the devices in the network and view all anomalies (that may need user intervention) in the devices.

Paragon Automation runs a series of automated health checks on the network and the network devices. The results of these checks provide a granular view of the health of hardware, software, interfaces, routing, compliance with Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks, and connectivity of a device. You can drill down to a device to view information, such as:

  • Remote management data

  • CPU and memory utilization, fans, and PSUs

  • Available physical interfaces, nonoperational interfaces, and data on input and output traffic

  • Information on the SIRT advisories and genuineness of the OS installed on the devices

  • Location, version, and compliance of the committed configuration with CIS benchmarks

  • Device connectivity health and data

  • Routing protocols, and health information related to BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, RSVP, LSP, and LDP neighbors

For information on drill-in views, see About the Device-Name Page.

Paragon Automation detects and generates alerts and alarms for issues in your devices and in your overall network. You can also get notifications for alerts and alarms over external applications such as e-mail and Slack. Timely detection of issues enables you to fix them immediately and minimize the impact of such issues on your network and its performance. You can monitor these alerts and alarms from a single page, and drill down to the devices, to easily identify and fix the issues generating them. For more information, see About the Troubleshoot Devices Page.

You can view a list of all alert and alarm events and choose to monitor specific events using event templates. In addition and importantly, you can subscribe to be notified of specific events over e-mail and Slack.

You can analyze device system logs to further analyze the status and health of the devices in the network. For more information, see About the Events Page.

Health Dashboard

Paragon Automation provides a health dashboard, which displays a comprehensive view of metrics. The metrics help you to understand the overall health of your network. The Health Dashboard has the following tabs:

  • WAN Health—Provides data on the health of the devices, interfaces, and routing components in your network. For more information, see About the WAN Health Tab.

  • Trust—Provides the average trust score of the targets, and data on vulnerabilities in your network. For more information, see About the Trust Tab.

You can use these metrics to understand the behavior of your network, analyze the impact of potential issues, and take data-driven actions to fix the issues.

Network Events Observability

Paragon Automation monitors Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for a device, connectivity between the devices, and your overall network, and generates alerts when any anomalies are detected. Alerts are generated for interface, hardware, routing, and connectivity issues in your network. You can view these alert events and subscribe to be notified of the events over e-mail and over Slack. For more information, see Alerts Tab.

Benefits

  • Identify performance degradation of the network using the results of health-checks, alerts, and alarms

  • Monitor the overall health of your network using Health Dashboard, which presents real-time data that is easy to understand

  • Get a centralized view of your network topology to help in network planning

  • Detect device faults and network issues and send alert and alarm notifications over e-mail and Slack for quick resolution of issues

  • Boost network operational efficiency and deliver high-quality experience for network operators

  • Maintain low operational costs

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