NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

Format: 75 multiple-choice questions
Time allotment: 90 minutes

Study Resources
The intention of the resources provided is to supplement your experience with NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA). The included resources are not all-inclusive and should only aid as a starting place for your studies.

• NTA Administrator’s Guide
• NTA Getting Started Guide
• NTA Upgrade Guide

For additional study resources, visit THWACK or our NTA product page.

NTA features help with troubleshooting, efficiency, and provide visibility into traffic flows. Use NTA to monitor your network, discover traffic patterns, and avoid bandwidth hogs. Learn more about the different features NTA offers and uses.

IP address groups
SolarWinds NTA allows you to establish IP address groups for selective monitoring of custom categories or segments of your network.

Use NetFlow Flow Navigator
The Flow Navigator allows you to create your own custom NetFlow views.

NetFlow sources
The NetFlow Sources resource provides a list of flow- and CBQoS-enabled nodes and interfaces that are currently monitored by SolarWinds NTA.

Applications and service ports
SolarWinds NTA allows you to directly specify the applications and ports you want to monitor. Additionally, you can specify protocol types by application, giving you the ability to monitor multiple applications on the same port if each application uses a different protocol.

Flow sources and CBQoS-enabled devices
You can add flow-enabled devices managed by SolarWinds NPM for monitoring to SolarWinds NTA.

Top XX Applications
This resource provides a view of the Top XX applications responsible for monitored traffic on your network, ranked in order of traffic volume.

Top XX Endpoint Resource
This resource explains the Top XX Endpoint resource data compared to other resources in NTA.

Top XX Autonomous System Conversations
This resource provides a list of the most bandwidth-intensive autonomous systems conversations.

Top talker optimization
Top Talker Optimization allows you to configure SolarWinds NTA to only record those flows that represent conversations requiring the most bandwidth on your network.

NTA Flow Storage Database maintenance
Maintaining the NTA Flow Storage Database requires setting an appropriate retention period that corresponds with the amount of data you need to keep and the free disk space available on your NTA Flow Storage Database disk.

View CBQoS data
Class-Based Quality of Service (CBQoS) is an SNMP-based, proprietary Cisco technology available on selected Cisco devices that gives you the ability to prioritize and manage traffic on your network.

Flow environment best practices
This resource provides recommendations for setting your flow environment.

1. Why might you see duplicate flow traffic in your resources?
1. Your devices are configured to export NetFlow on both ingress and egress interfaces
2. Your resources are set for the same time in the time and flow direction settings
3. Your flow device configurations are only set to the IP flow ingress command
4. You set the interface to also send CBQOS
2. To avoid duplicate data, where should you NOT enable Ingress and Egress flows?
1. Core layer
2. Distribution layer
3. Access layer

Learn more about requirements and deploying and installing NTA and scalability engines.

IOPS requirements for NTA Flow Storage Database
Learn about IOPS requirements for NTA Flow Storage Database server.

NTA 4.4 Adoption: Frequently Asked Questions
This resource lists frequently asked questions about the deployment changes in NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and the NTA Flow Storage database.

NTA 4.4 Compatibility
This resource provides information on the modules NTA 4.4 is compatible with.

SolarWinds NTA licensing and deployment
Licensing for SolarWinds NTA follows the license level of your SolarWinds NPM installation.

Hardware recommendations for the NTA 4.4 SQL Flow Storage database
This resource provides hardware recommendations for the NTA 4.4 SQL Flow Storage database based on the parameters and profile.

1. The only RAID configurations that should be used with SolarWinds NTA are __ and __?
1. 0
2. 1
3. 1+0
4. 2
5. 2+0
2. SolarWinds NTA requires which bit operating system?
1. 16
2. 32
3. 64
4. 128

Learn how to use and maintain NTA in your environment.

How does default DNS resolution work in SolarWinds NTA
In SolarWinds NTA, host or domain names are stored directly in individual flows. SolarWinds NTA receives a flow from an IP address and waits for the DNS server to resolve it.

NTA settings
You can use SolarWinds NTA to customize monitoring flow traffic and CBQoS data on your network to provide the most relevant information.

NTA port requirements
This resource lists ports that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer uses to communicate with other devices and servers.

Monitor bandwidth utilization using Flow Navigator filters
Use the Flow Navigator application to filter your SolarWinds NTA views and add them directly to the Views toolbar.

DNS resolution options
To meet your specific network monitoring needs, SolarWinds NTA provides the different options for configuring a DNS resolution.

View NTA data in the Orion Web Console
After you configure and enable a NetFlow source, you can view the various types of NetFlow statistics that it records in the Orion Web Console. The statistics are provided as resources grouped to form individual views.

NTA - Understanding NetFlow Bandwidth Traffic IN and Traffic OUT display
Understand NetFlow Bandwidth Traffic IN and Traffic OUT display.

Enable monitoring on unmonitored traffic in NTA
This resource describes how to monitor unmonitored traffic in NTA.

Unmanaged NetFlow interface
This resource provides information when SolarWinds NTA is receiving traffic from an interface which is not managed in SolarWinds NPM. However, the corresponding node is managed in SolarWinds NPM. Enable monitoring on unmonitored traffic in NTA This resource describes how to monitor unmonitored traffic in NTA.

NTA charts
SolarWinds NTA charts display pie chart or area chart summaries of resource-related data, enabling a more detailed view of resources. You can create different types of area charts, including stack area, stack spline area, stack line, line, spline, and bar.

NTA reports
In SolarWinds NTA, flow data are stored in the NTA Flow Storage Database and CBQoS data are stored in the SolarWinds Orion database. Over time, both databases accumulate a large amount of information. SolarWinds offers both a broad array of predefined reports and user interfaces that enable you to create your own custom reports.

NetFlow collector services
NetFlow Collector Services provides status information about current flow collectors. In case your flow-enabled device configuration requires it, the following procedure resets or adds flow collection ports on which the SolarWinds NTA collector listens for flow data.

CBQoS policies
SolarWinds NTA offers flow traffic statistics that can help in determining what CBQoS classes and policies to create and apply. SolarWinds NTA also includes configurable alerts to help you verify the expected effects of the policy maps you apply to interfaces on your relevant Cisco devices. SolarWinds NTA provides information for tuning the CBQoS implementation.

Ingress bytes, egress bytes, bytes through, and total bytes in NTA
This resource discusses the difference between ingress bytes, egress bytes, bytes through, and total bytes in NTA.

Configure NTA-specific alerts
You can use the out-of-the-box alerts as templates for customized alerts. Configure an alert for SolarWinds NTA based on a predefined top talker or CBQoS alert.

1. What happens when you disable DNS resolution?
1. DNS information is deleted from the database
2. DNS information is stored for 90 days and then deleted from the database
3. DNS information is stored for 30 days and then deleted from the database
4. Current DNS information is saved, but no new data is monitored
2. Which Top Talkers alerts are out-of-the-box? Select all that apply.
1. High Receive Percent Utilization
2. High Flow Percent Utilization
3. High Transmit Percent Utilization
4. High Bandwidth Percent Utilization

Learn about upgrading your NTA product. Review the upgrade checklists to know how to prepare and complete upgrades, including information on upgrading with SolarWinds High Availability (HA).

SolarWinds Product Upgrade Advisor
If you have the following minimum versions, you can upgrade multiple products by downloading one installer.

SolarWinds Orion Installer
The installer determines whether upgrades are available for the products and scalability engines in your deployment.

NTA Upgrade Guide
This resource provides a checklist that details the steps for upgrading NTA in your environment.

Legacy Orion product installers for main poller, additional polling engine, additional web servers, and HA
Use this installer to download and install products to match your main polling engine.

NTA releases
This resource contains links to release notes and hotfixes for previous versions of NTA.

1. When you upgrade NTA, agents update at a throttled number of ___ to limit the impact on the polling engine.
1. 5
2. 10
3. 15
4. 20
2. If you upgrade multiple versions of NTA, which step in the Configuration Wizard do you only need run in the last installation?
1. Enter website root directory
2. Skip website binding
3. Website optimization

Learn how to troubleshoot various issues, such as NetFlow issues, chart issues, database connection issues, or CBQoS issues.

Identify consumers of interface bandwidth using alerts
The information in this resource helps you determine if top consumers of interface bandwidth are using resources for business purposes (and therefore need to add capacity), or if you should block top talkers.

Bandwidth capacity planning and analysis
Use SolarWinds NTA to monitor interface-level network bandwidth and traffic patterns over the course of months, days, or minutes. SolarWinds NTA converts flow data into charts and tables that quantify exactly how a network is being used, by whom, and for what purpose.

Find the cause of high bandwidth utilization
If a node managed in SolarWinds NPM is also a NetFlow source, it exports NetFlow data that you are currently monitoring in SolarWinds NTA. You can use SolarWinds NTA to analyze interface bandwidth utilization on the node whenever your workflow requires.

How to troubleshoot NetFlow using Wireshark
Video: This video shows you how to use Wireshark to troubleshoot four of the most common issues that may occur when sending flow data to SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

NetFlow v5 Wireshark packet capture
This resource describes how to read a NetFlow v5 Wireshark capture.

NTA Troubleshooting
In SolarWinds NTA, you can encounter various issues, such as NetFlow issues, chart issues, database connection issues, or CBQoS issues.

Troubleshoot collector services
Problems with the NetFlow service are reflected in the Collector Services resource. If your collector service status is down or unknown, you can troubleshoot it using the Orion Service Manager.

NTA Chart issues
This resource discusses the most common issues encountered on SolarWinds NTA charts.

1. How do you check the status of CBQoS on your device?
1. Event Log Consolidator
2. SolarWinds MIB Viewer
3. Event Log Forwarder for Windows
4. Server Health Monitor

2. Flow data are stored SolarWinds Orion database.

   1. True
   2. False

Features

1. A
2. C

Administration

1. A
2. A, C

Installation

1. A, C
2. A

Upgrade

1. B
2. D

Troubleshooting

1. B
2. B