Recommended Configuration › Configure Logical Ports

Configure Logical Ports

The Multi-Port Monitor appliance has two, four, or eight physical ports through which it receives data from switches in your network. When connected to a mirrored port, a physical port is assigned a logical port definition that corresponds to its ID number on the Multi-Port Monitor adapter.

Associate a name with a logical port to make it easier to identify the monitor feed in CA Application Delivery Analysis for the TIM. You can change the default logical port definitions.

CA CEM TIM does not support VLAN-based monitor feeds. Do not assign VLAN traffic on the logical port for the TIM to domains.

Logical port settings also let you limit the amount of data that is captured and monitored from each mirror session. Port filters determine the segments of the network or hosts that are monitored and the types of data to include or exclude from capture files.

CA Transaction Impact Monitor (CA TIM) monitors mirrored ports from one logical port, despite the availability of multiple logical ports on the Multi-Port Monitor appliance. To map multiple physical ports to one logical port, mirror the web traffic from the WAN to the logical port. This traffic is processed for CA TIM and CA CA Application Delivery Analysis. Use the other logical ports for other port mirroring, ideally from the access-layer switches closest to the servers. The non-TIM logical ports are processed for CA Application Delivery Analysis only.

Follow these steps:

1. Click Administration, Logical Ports in the web interface. The Logical Ports page opens.
2. Provide a new name for the port in the Name field. The name helps to identify the source of the traffic you want to monitor, such as the name or location of a core switch.
3. Select Enabled to enable the port for monitoring.
4. (Optional) Select 'Save Packets To Disk' to save captured data packets on the hard disk drive of the appliance.

   Note: When this option is disabled, packets are affected in the following ways:

   • Packet capture files are not saved.
   • Packet capture files are not available for packet capture investigations that are launched from CA Application Delivery Analysis.
   • Packet capture files are not available for the Export to PCAP feature.
5. Select 'TIM' to identify the port you are configuring as a CA TIM port. This check box is available only when CA TIM is installed on the Multi-Port Monitor appliance. You can also use this option to disable or enable packets to the TIM.

   Note: When this option is disabled, packets are affected in the following ways:

   • Packets are not sent to the TIM.
   • The logical port filter settings for the TIM are preserved.
6. Click Filters to enable a hardware filter for the port you are configuring. For more information, see Using Hardware Filters to Manage Data.

   Web traffic that CA TIM monitors must have full packets.

7. Select a check box to assign (map) a physical port to the logical port. The number of available ports depends on the capture card configuration you purchased. You can map two or more physical ports to one logical port. This configuration provides more accurate monitoring in environments with asymmetrical routing, and lets you monitor primary and failover circuits.

   Logical port numbering begins at 0. The capture layer maps physical ports to logical ports. The mapping process is transparent to CA TIM.

8. Click Save.
9. Repeat steps 2 through 8 for each port you want to configure.
10. Restart the nqcapd process if you changed any parameter other than the Name field.
11. (Optional) Review the status of the logical ports in the Capture Card Logical Port Status table on the System Status page.