Network Guidelines

Understanding how your network resources perform is essential to healthy network management. During the planning stage, some thought should be given to how ELM will fit into your network. Your network will have to meet certain minimum requirements:

Name Resolution
Healthy name resolution is essential to a trouble-free network. A thorough understanding of the name resolution methods used by Windows operating systems is essential to optimizing network resources. An unreliable name resolution system can create the appearance of slow, unreliable, or failed network applications. ELM uses TCP/IP to communicate and depends on the operating system and configured name resolution (e.g., WINS and/or DNS). If you have not implemented name resolution in your environment, you may use IP addresses for your ELM Server and Agents, and ELM will function normally.

Network Bandwidth
ELM makes very efficient use of network bandwidth. A detailed description of the network communication - at the packet level - between the various components of the ELM system follows:

ELM Server <--> Service Agent
When an event occurs on a Windows system running a Service Agent, the Service Agent reads the new event and forwards it to each ELM Server that is monitoring it. When multiple events occur in rapid succession, the Agent will group the events together and send them within the same session to the monitoring Server. This behavior optimizes network communication.

ELM Server <--> Virtual Agent
The amount of network traffic between an ELM Server and a Virtual Agent depends on what Monitor Items are used, the individual Monitor Item schedules (which determine the frequency of communication), and the amount of data to be collected.

Server <--> ELM Console
The ELM Console communicates with the Session Manager component of the ELM Server process. This communication is DCOM-based, encrypted and authenticated. DCOM and RPC connections are made between the ELM Server and the ELM Console to facilitate the transfer of the encrypted data. The amount of data transmitted depends on a variety of factors, including how much data is sent to the ELM Server by Service Agents, what containers are open in the ELM Console. etc.

If you have any questions or comments about this guide, or if you would like assistance sizing your ELM Server or designing your ELM-based solution, please contact TNT Software's Product Support Group.