H3C Technologies H3C Intelligent Management Center - Manual (Page 16)

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records for host, application, and inter-business tasks as these types of tasks are not tied to specific
network flow record sources.
Traffic analysis tasks also allow you to organize how network resources are grouped in NTA for analysis
and reporting purposes. This is a powerful configuration option that requires consideration, as NTA
summarizes data found in network flow records based on the way you have grouped resources. For
example, if you create an application task that groups six disparate applications, NTA provides
summarized reporting for all six applications, not for individual applications in the group.
In general, you should group network resources by the seven types of network flow analysis task options
provided by NTA. However, NTA allows you to group resources of the same type. For example, you can
create an interface traffic analysis task that contains one or more interfaces from one or more devices.
This enables you to provide summarized reporting for interfaces based on the group criteria you define.
These are some of the options:
• Location
• Function
• Interface type
• Organization structure
Inter-business traffic analysis tasks provide additional grouping capabilities because this task type
combines host and application grouping into tasks that are business-service oriented. NTA analyzes and
summarizes network flow records based on your method of grouping like resources. That is probably the
most important benefit.
The final aspect of traffic analysis tasks to consider is that the way you group tasks and the traffic analysis
tasks that you create defines how you access them. Traffic analysis tasks generate links on the left
navigation tree under the Traffic Analysis and Audit area that you use to access the reports generated by
them. Creating tasks that organize your resources effectively and contain only the resources on which you
want to report results in an efficient navigation tree and easy report access.
For environments that have multiple devices that generate network flow data and multiple interfaces for
which administrators want to collect data, careful planning of NTA traffic analysis task management is
essential. This document contains a chapter for each monitoring types in NTA. These chapters summarize
reporting capabilities and describe configuration considerations. They also include instructions for
creating tasks and accessing the reports generated by tasks. Review the chapter for the monitoring and
reporting type you want to enable in NTA to ensure that you get the most out of NTA and the network
flow data available in your network.
Application, protocol, and application category management
The following features enable administrators to configure how NTA handles applications in the
processing and reporting of network flow records:
• Application—The association of a port number to an application name. NTA comes with many
predefined applications. NTA also enables administrators to create user-defined applications. After
applications are created, administrators can select one or more applications for network flow
record processing when they create application, host, or inter-business traffic analysis tasks.
• Protocol—The association of a protocol number to a protocol name. NTA installs with predefined
protocols. NTA also enables administrators to create user-defined protocols. You can enable or
disable any of the protocols to include or exclude the selected protocol from analysis and reporting.
• Application category—A grouping of applications. NTA installs with predefined application
categories that group applications by application type. You can create your own application