CFM FAQs

Content Flow Monitor (CFM) is a web-based status monitoring application for managing Cisco server load balancing devices. CFM leverages Cisco's ContentFlow Architecture (CoFA) to intelligently discover the roles and relationships of server load balancing devices.

CFM monitors the content delivery network, and presents up-to-date aggregated device health status, service availability, detailed device configuration, and real time performance statistics. CFM reduces network management complexity and provides performance monitoring capabilities for Cisco server load balancing devices.

Who should use CFM?

CFM is for medium-to-large enterprises with large web sites in data centers deploying Cisco server load balancing devices, such as LocalDirector and Cisco 7200/7500 routers.

How does CFM add value to Cisco's ContentFlow Architecture?

Monitoring and administering content delivery devices are crucial in maintaining a reliable network for mission-critical applications and services. CFM leverages Cisco's ContentFlow Architecture to intelligently discover Cisco server load balancing devices in the network.

CFM is an essential tool for understanding, navigating and troubleshooting content flows. CFM reduces network management complexity and provides performance monitoring capabilities for Cisco server load balancing devices.

Is CFM part of the CiscoWorks2000 product family?

Yes. CFM is a member of the CiscoWorks2000 product family. CFM is packaged with the LAN Management Solution bundle to provide an essential management tool for Cisco server load balancing devices.

How is CFM integrated with CiscoWorks2000?

You can launch the CFM client from the CiscoWorks2000 desktop. Also, CFM shares the common web server, user management, and security management model with CiscoWorks2000.

What does Cisco plan for future releases of CFM?

CFM's performance monitoring capabilities will be enhanced with a wide range of performance reports. In addition, new service provisioning and device configuration features will enable you to quickly deploy new virtual server services in your content delivery network.

What entities does CFM manage?

CFM manages four distinct entities:

Services manager---The brains of server load balancing, a services manager makes load balancing decisions based on application availability, server capacity, and load distribution algorithms, such as round robin or least connections. Using load balancing and server/application feedback, the services manager determines a real server for the packet flow and sends this information to the requesting forwarding agent. Once the optimal destination is decided, all other packets in the packet flow are directed to a real server by the forwarding agent, increasing packet throughput.
Forwarding agent---Packet redirector that forwards packets based on decisions made by the services manager. The forwarding agent filters packets coming into the virtual network and sends packets without a known server destination to the services manager.
Real server---Physical computing engine or part of a physical computing engine that offers one or more application services to a set of clients in the network. This includes Windows NT or Solaris servers.
Virtual server---Presents a single virtual IP address that represents an application server farm for clients.

What performance statistics does CFM gather in real time?

CFM gathers and displays, in real time, a wide range of performance statistics for each type of content delivery device. These performance statistics include total number of flows and cache entries or drops for forwarding agents, total number of connections and packets for virtual servers, and failover unit type and status for LocalDirectors.

What device configuration information does CFM gather?

CFM uploads a variety of device configuration information from each type of content delivery device. This configuration information includes IP address, port number, protocol supported, and weight for virtual servers, IP address, multicast address, and notification state for forwarding agents, and IP address and failover state for LocalDirectors.

How does CFM discover content delivery devices?

CFM leverages Cisco's ContentFlow Architecture to intelligently discover Cisco server load balancing devices in the network using the SNMP protocol and MIBs related to server load balancing (CISCO-LD-MIB and CISCO-FA-MIB).

To initiate the discovery of content delivery devices in the network, CFM requires a list of seed devices. The CFM server provides a graphical user interface for adding, deleting, or modifying seed devices using their IP address and SNMP community strings.

Does CFM monitor non-Cisco server load balancing devices?

No. CFM does not support non-Cisco server load balancing devices that do not conform to Cisco's ContentFlow Architecture.

Does CFM display up-to-date device information?

Yes. You can get up-to-date device configuration information and real-time performance statistics for any Cisco content delivery devices in the network by selecting File > Refresh.

Does CFM provide the ability to configure devices?

CFM provides performance monitoring of the content delivery network. CFM automatically gathers and displays critical configuration information. However, in the current release, CFM does not provide the capability for configuring content delivery devices.

Does CFM support any network management industry standards?

Yes. CFM uses the SNMP protocol and Cisco published MIBs for gathering real-time performance data from Cisco content delivery devices.

Which operating systems does CFM support?

CFM is a web-based client/server application. The CFM server runs on Windows NT version 4.0 or Sun Solaris version 2.6. You can access the CFM server from any platform that supports Netscape Communicator version 4.61 or Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.0.

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CFM FAQs