Application Experience with Cisco DNA Center - Complete Guide
Why Application Experience is Important
Application Experience in Cisco DNA Center is crucial for modern network management because it provides visibility into how applications perform across the network. Organizations depend on applications for business operations, and understanding their performance helps IT teams ensure optimal user experience, troubleshoot issues proactively, and make informed decisions about network resources.
What is Application Experience?
Application Experience is a feature within Cisco DNA Center that monitors, analyzes, and reports on application performance across the enterprise network. It leverages data from various network devices and endpoints to provide insights into application health, usage patterns, and potential issues affecting user experience.
Key components include:
- Application Health Dashboard: Provides a centralized view of application performance metrics
- Application 360: Offers detailed analytics for specific applications
- Health Score: A numerical representation (1-10) of application performance
- Issue Detection: Automated identification of application-related problems
How Application Experience Works
1. Data Collection: DNA Center collects telemetry data from network devices using protocols like NetFlow, SNMP, and streaming telemetry.
2. Application Recognition: Using Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR2), the system identifies thousands of applications traversing the network.
3. Performance Analysis: The system analyzes metrics such as latency, jitter, packet loss, and throughput for each application.
4. Health Scoring: Applications receive health scores based on their performance against baseline thresholds.
5. Visualization: Data is presented through intuitive dashboards showing application health, trends, and anomalies.
Key Features for CCNA
- Application Visibility: Identifies what applications are running on the network
- Quality of Experience (QoE): Measures end-user experience for applications
- Business Relevance: Categorizes applications as business-relevant, business-irrelevant, or default
- Historical Analysis: Tracks application performance over time
- Integration with SD-Access: Works with software-defined networking for policy enforcement
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Application Experience with Cisco DNA Center
1. Understand the Health Score Range: Remember that health scores range from 1-10, where 10 represents optimal performance and scores below 4 indicate critical issues.
2. Know the Data Sources: DNA Center uses NetFlow, SNMP, and device telemetry to gather application data. Questions may ask about how DNA Center obtains application information.
3. Remember Business Relevance Categories: Applications are classified into three categories - business-relevant, business-irrelevant, and default. This classification helps with QoS policy decisions.
4. Focus on Intent-Based Networking: Application Experience is part of Cisco's intent-based networking approach. Understand how it aligns with translating business intent into network policies.
5. Dashboard Navigation: Be familiar with where to find application health information within DNA Center's Assurance section.
6. Troubleshooting Context: Understand that Application Experience helps identify whether issues are network-related or application-related.
7. NBAR2 Connection: Remember that NBAR2 is the underlying technology for application recognition. Questions may reference this relationship.
8. Read Questions Carefully: Look for keywords like health score, application visibility, QoE, or assurance to identify Application Experience-related questions.
9. Eliminate Wrong Answers: If an answer mentions manual application identification or lacks automation concepts, it is likely incorrect for DNA Center questions.
10. Remember the Purpose: The primary goal is improving user experience and providing network administrators with actionable insights about application performance.