SD-WAN Migration Monitoring Tool You Need
Monitor SD-WAN migrations before, during & after. Test your proof-of-concept. Ensure your SD-WAN promise.
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Are You Planning an
SD-WAN Migration?
And traditional monitoring tools don’t offer the depth needed for modern WAN networks.
Moving to SD-WAN can transform your network, but ensuring the success of your migration requires more than just deploying your new network. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make during SD-WAN migrations is not monitoring performance before and during, only after, and only relying solely on the SD-WAN vendor's user interface to monitor performance.
The truth? 75% of IT professionals lack full network visibility into their SD-WAN migration, leading to overlooked issues and performance bottlenecks before, during and after. Legacy SD-WAN monitoring features often fall short because they can’t comprehensive view of the entire migration process only telling you if your network is up or down once it's been deployed.
Without a clear comparison of network performance before, during, and after the migration, you risk experiencing unexpected problems that could sidetrack your SD-WAN migration, Internet connection roadblocks and poor user experience. Lucky for you, Obkio’s Network and SD-WAN monitoring tool, gives you the end-to-end network visibility you need to identify and resolve SD-WAN migration issues in real-time.
Deploying Obkio before your SD-WAN migration ensures seamless monitoring at every stage of the migration, allowing you to verify that your SD-WAN investment delivers the magical performance promised. If issues arise, Obkio provides the critical insights needed to troubleshoot effectively, empowering you to confidently move forward or make the call to backtrack if necessary.
The Problem: Hidden Risks of SD-WAN Migrations
Why Lack of Visibility In Your SD-WAN Migration Can Jeopardize Its Success
SD-WAN migrations are massive undertakings, filled with great promises but also carrying huge risks under the surface. Businesses invest heavily in new equipment and resources right from the start, aiming to unlock better network performance and reliability. However, the road to achieving these benefits is often more complex than expected.
Many companies mistakenly assume that the SD-WAN vendor’s user interface will provide sufficient visibility into their migration. However, it lacks critical insights, such as performance comparisons across the migration stages or detailed monitoring of each Internet connection. Without these, IT teams struggle to identify issues quickly, and executive teams are left without the proof needed to justify the investment.
When problems arise, the consequences are costly: delays, wasted resources, and doubts about the migration’s success. That's why your business needs a solution like Obkio's SD-WAN Migration Monitoring tool to give you the visibility you need to ensure a smooth migration and the historical data to confidently validate your investment.
The Solution: Partner with Obkio for a Smooth SD-WAN Migration
Monitor Before, During, and After Your SD-WAN Migration for Guaranteed Success
Avoid the pitfalls of SD-WAN migration by deploying Obkio from the start. With Obkio, you gain the visibility you need to ensure your migration is seamless and successful:
Before the Migration: Monitor your existing network infrastructure to assess its readiness for the migration. Identify weak points that could hinder the process.
During the Migration: Track network performance in real-time to detect issues early. Obkio provides the insights you need to backtrack or adjust if necessary, minimizing disruptions.
After the Migration: Prove that your SD-WAN solution delivers on its promises by comparing performance before and after. With Obkio’s historical data retention, you can validate the ROI and ensure ongoing performance.
Obkio empowers IT teams with actionable insights and equips executives with the data needed to showcase the value of their SD-WAN investment. With Obkio by your side, your SD-WAN migration doesn’t just succeed – it thrives.
The Most Common SD-WAN Migrations Obkio Monitors
Are you planning any of these types of SD-WAN migrations?
SD-WAN migrations come in various forms, each with its own challenges. Effective monitoring is critical to ensure a smooth transition and deliver the promised benefits. Here are the most common SD-WAN migrations:
MPLS to SD-WAN
Transition from costly MPLS networks to SD-WAN solutions combining MPLS, broadband, and other transports. Reduce costs while maintaining performance and security through effective monitoring.
Hybrid WAN to SD-WAN
Optimize traffic flows and gain better control by replacing or augmenting existing connectivity with SD-WAN. Monitoring ensures seamless integration across all connections.
Internet VPN to SD-WAN
Replace site-to-site VPNs with SD-WAN appliances to improve performance and security. Monitoring ensures no disruptions during the transition.
Legacy Router Refresh to SD-WAN
Upgrade outdated branch routers to modern SD-WAN appliances, simplifying management and boosting performance. Monitoring ensures a smooth upgrade process.
Cloud-Based SD-WAN
Deploy SD-WAN gateways in the cloud to optimize connections between branches and cloud resources. Monitoring ensures consistent performance and a seamless user experience.
When to Monitor Your SD-WAN Migration With Obkio
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Deploy Obkio in all network locations migrating to SD-WAN before you’ve even begun your migration.
Monitoring your SD-WAN migration is not just important after the fact. It’s a critical step at every stage of the process. Don’t wait until issues arise and you’re left without the visibility to solve them.
Before Your SD-WAN Migration: Prepare your network for the migration by identifying and addressing any issues in your current infrastructure. This ensures you’re starting your migration from a strong foundation.
- Performance Metrics: Gather data on latency, jitter, packet loss, and MOS scores to establish a baseline.
- Dynamic Thresholds & Alerts: Proactively detect and fix problems before they impact the migration.
- Proactive Notifications: Get notified about crucial events that may affect network quality.
During Your SD-WAN Migration: Keep your network performance on track with real-time monitoring to pinpoint issues as they occur. Obkio provides the visibility you need to avoid delays and keep the migration moving forward.
- Dashboards & Visual Traceroutes: Instantly see if your migration is affected by issues in the underlay, overlay, or SD-WAN devices.
- Detailed Analysis: Identify where, how, and when problems occur to quickly resolve them.
After Your SD-WAN Migration: Validate your SD-WAN vendor's promises by ensuring your new network meets performance expectations.
- End-to-End Monitoring: Obkio’s Agents monitor performance from the customer LAN, providing insights from the end-user’s perspective.
- SLA Monitoring: Confirm that load balancing, multiple link utilization, and performance align with vendor claims.
- Post-Migration Validation: Ensure your SD-WAN delivers consistent performance improvements.
Our Customers Love Monitoring SD-WAN With Obkio
No Matter Your Network Issue
We've Got the Solution For You
Obkio's solution is designed to be the easiest Network Monitoring tool on the market, making it the ideal choice for businesses of all sizes, from IT professionals working from home to managing the complexities of large-scale corporate networks.
- 14-Day Proof Of Concept
- Single and home offices
- SMEs with less than 3 locations
- Mid to large multisite networks
- MSPs & large businesses
- Non-Profit Organizations
- Colleges and Universities
Check out our plans, all available with a free 14-day trial, no credit card required!
Deploy a Network Monitoring Tool Before Your SD-WAN Migration
Start Your Free Trial. Deploy Obkio and Start Monitoring Your Network in Just 10 Minutes.
The first step to ensuring a successful SD-WAN migration is deploying Obkio. With Obkio, getting started is quick and effortless. Our easy-to-follow Onboarding Wizard guides you through the entire setup process, allowing you to deploy Monitoring Agents across your network in just 10 minutes.
You don’t need to be a network expert to use Obkio. The platform is designed to eliminate the need for complex configurations or steep learning curves, making it accessible for IT professionals at all levels. Once deployed, Obkio provides immediate insights into your network’s health and performance, ensuring you’re fully prepared for your migration.
During the 14-day free trial, you’ll have access to all premium features, giving you the tools to monitor your network with complete visibility and confidence. Start your journey today and ensure your SD-WAN migration begins with a strong foundation.
“Obkio ensured that our stakeholders could see the value of our investment in SD-WAN. They provided data and metrics proving that this transformation was successfully improving the end-to-end quality of services for our internal customers. For day-to-day operations, Obkio is improving our ability to troubleshoot incidents rapidly.”
Measure Performance Of Your Current Network & Create a Baseline
Obkio creates a baseline of your current network performance to identify issues before your migration and measure performance with your new SD-WAN network after your migration.
Monitor Your Current Network Performance
Before starting your migration, you need to establish a baseline and gain a clear understanding of your current network’s performance. This ensures you can confidently compare and verify that your SD-WAN network delivers the promised performance improvements you dreamed of.
Deploy Obkio Monitoring Agents within your local network and across key network locations, such as remote offices, headquarters, data centers, and cloud services. These Agents will begin collecting network metrics like latency, jitter, and packet loss, which are critical for assessing network performance. The data collected will allow you to create detailed dashboards and historical records that become the foundation for comparison throughout your migration.
Create A Baseline to Compare After Your SD-WAN Migration
This baseline isn’t just for reporting and ensuring your SLA is upheld, it’s a powerful communication tool for you as a network engineer or member of an IT team. Often, other departments in your organization may not fully grasp the scope or value of your migration efforts.
By presenting clear, data-driven insights into how your network performed before and after the migration, you can effectively showcase the benefits of your work and confidently prove its value to your entire team.
Monitor Network Performance During the SD-WAN Migration
Keep a close watch on tour network performance throughout the SD-WAN migration to identify any issues.
While SD-WAN does its job of seamlessly switching between Internet connections when one fails, you won’t always notice the transition until both connections are down. This can leave you in the dark when issues arise. That’s why it’s important to monitor each Internet connection in real-time, and not just the user experience.
During the SD-WAN migration, various network issues can impact the transition. From bandwidth issues to latency spikes, it’s essential to keep track of how these problems may affect your network’s performance. Obkio’s monitoring solution acts as your migration supervisor, continuously tracking key network metrics and identifying potential problems before they disrupt your migration.
Obkio allows you to set up real-time alerts and notifications to instantly inform you of any issues that could hinder the progress of your SD-WAN migration. Whether it’s jitter, packet loss, or connectivity problems, you’ll have the tools to quickly diagnose and address these issues, ensuring your migration stays on track and your performance remains stable.
Step 3.1. Measure the SD-WAN Promise
Even during your SD-WAN migration, Obkio allows you to see if you're getting the SD-WAN performance you were promised.
To be able to truly see the promise of your SD-WAN network, you need to monitor performance from the end-user perspective, as well as the underlay connections themself to compare the performance.
SD-WAN vendors usually make two promises:
- The capacity of the SD-WAN device to seamlessly perform load balancing on multiple links.
- The ability of the SD-WAN management platform to provide visibility on the network performance.
Luckily Obkio can monitor SD-WAN network performance like an end-user and can also monitor each connection used by the SD-WAN appliance. Obkio's Agent is installed in the customer LAN, behind the SD-WAN appliance, to ensure it does its job from the end-user's point-of-view.
- A local Monitoring Agent behind the SD-WAN appliance
- And three remote Monitoring Agents that are located at the same location (either cloud, datacenter or head office)
The three network monitoring sessions monitor the network performance between the two locations using different connections:
- The performance as seen by the end-user (load balanced between the connection using the SD-WAN algorithm) - top graph
- The performance of the ISP A connection - middle graph
- The performance of the ISP B connection - bottom graph
To Continue or Rollback the SD-WAN Migration?
Obkio helps you make an informed decision on whether to continue or rollback your migration using real-time performance monitoring.
At this critical stage in your SD-WAN migration, you need to assess whether the performance meets the expectations you set for the project. With Obkio’s real-time performance monitoring, you can track the impact of your new SD-WAN service immediately, so you don’t have to wait until the migration is complete to identify potential issues.
There's an issue with the SD-WAN migration.
However, if you notice performance degradation or any critical issues that could affect business operations, Obkio gives you the ability to roll back and troubleshoot the problems in real-time. With detailed insights and performance data, you can quickly pinpoint the cause of any network issues and decide whether it’s best to pause or correct the migration before moving forward.
The SD-WAN Performance is as expected, continue your migration.
As you monitor the migration, you’ll be able to clearly see if the network performance is improving or if there are signs that the migration is not going as planned. If everything looks good, you can continue with confidence, using Obkio’s data to document performance improvements for future reporting. If the migration is progressing smoothly, continue moving forward and roll out to the next site, knowing that your network is on the right path.
Troubleshoot the SD-WAN Issue and Move Forward
Let’s say you’ve started the SD-WAN migration, and Obkio detects a spike in latency or packet loss. With the detailed insights from Obkio, you can zero in on the problem — maybe it’s a misconfigured device or an ISP issue. Once you’ve tackled the issue, you can confidently move forward with the migration, knowing your network is back on track.
Identify a Major SD-WAN Issue and Roll Back
Now, imagine Obkio flags a bigger issue – like an application outage or a critical connectivity problem – that’s too complex to fix during the migration. No problem! You can use Obkio’s data to roll back to your original setup, giving you time to reevaluate and plan your next steps. Rolling back ensures there’s no major disruption to your operations while you sort things out.
“We do not consider Obkio to be an excessive expense, but rather as an investment that generates time savings and therefore money.”
Identify Common Issues During Your SD-WAN Migration
Spot and troubleshoot network issues affecting your new SD-WAN network to keep your migration on track.
SD-WAN migrations come with their own set of challenges, many of which stem from a lack of visibility and insufficient data. Identifying these issues early on can save you time, money, and frustration. Here are some common issues you might encounter during your SD-WAN migration:
Lacking Network Visibility
Traditional monitoring tools often miss key insights, especially for Internet connections. Obkio provides full visibility, so you can track performance across your entire network, identifying issues early.
Insufficient Internet Connection
Your current Internet connections may not be strong enough for SD-WAN. Obkio helps you monitor and assess your internet performance, ensuring it’s adequate for the migration.
ISP Issues
ISP-related issues like bandwidth limitations can disrupt your migration. Obkio detects ISP problems, so you can address them promptly and keep your migration on track.
Reliance on the SD-WAN Monitoring Interface
SD-WAN interfaces often lack data retention and don’t show full network performance. Obkio provides continuous, historical data, offering a complete picture before, during, and after the migration.
Lacking Baseline or Comparison Points
Without a baseline, it’s hard to measure the migration’s success. Obkio helps you collect data before migration, giving you a point of comparison for assessing improvements.
Managing Multiple Parties During an SD-WAN Migration
Obkio’s SD-WAN Monitoring tools helps you avoid the Blame Game and ensure accountability with clear network visibility.
SD-WAN migrations bring complexity due to the involvement of multiple parties – each managing different components of the network. These parties often include the SD-WAN vendor, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), internal IT teams, and third-party contractors or Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
When something goes wrong, the lack of clarity and visibility can lead to a frustrating "Ping-Pong" situation, where responsibility is shifted back and forth. Each party may point fingers at others, making it difficult to identify the root cause of the issue and resolve it quickly.
This blame game can significantly delay your migration, wasting valuable time and resources. Obkio’s network monitoring helps to break this cycle by providing clear, real-time data that can pinpoint issues quickly. With complete visibility across all parts of your network, you can ensure accountability at each step and avoid the confusion that comes with multiple parties pointing fingers.
Monitor and Report On Performance After the SD-WAN Migration
Prove your SD-WAN migration was worth it and ensure you're getting the performance you paid for.
One of the biggest advantages of deploying Obkio before your SD-WAN migration is that once it’s in place, there’s no need for reconfiguration afterward. Obkio is deployed like a user, monitoring from the end-user’s perspective to give you seamless visibility into your network before, during, and after the migration.
After the migration is complete, it’s time to assess whether it met your expectations. By creating a performance report, you can compare the state of your network before and after the migration to:
- Prove the migration was worth the investment into your new SD-WAN service.
- Validate that your SD-WAN vendor is delivering the performance promised in their SLA.
Obkio monitors every critical part of your network to give you insights into your:
- LAN: Track local network performance at each site to ensure smooth connectivity with your SD-WAN device.
- SD-WAN Devic: Monitor the performance of the SD-WAN equipment to confirm it’s functioning as expected.
- Underlay (ISP 1, ISP 2): Keep an eye on the Internet connections supporting your SD-WAN, including all involved ISPs.
- IPSec Tunnels: Measure the performance of encrypted tunnels transporting data securely.
- SD-WAN Internet: Assess how effectively your SD-WAN uses the Internet for routing and connectivity.
- Remote Branches: Verify that all remote branches experience reliable network performance.
With Obkio, you don’t just monitor for the sake of it – you use the data to showcase the success of your SD-WAN migration. This allows you to demonstrate clear results to stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands the value of the IT team’s efforts and the benefits to the entire organization.
Continuously Monitor SD-WAN Performance With Obkio
Keep Obkio’s SD-WAN Monitoring tool to continuously monitor your SD-WAN network after your migration. Identify issues, increase user satisfaction, and ensure your SD-WAN vendor upholds their SLA.
Your SD-WAN migration doesn’t end with the deployment – monitoring is an ongoing process. With Obkio, you can continuously monitor all aspects of your SD-WAN network to identify lingering issues or spot new problems before they disrupt your operations.
Obkio’s real-time monitoring ensures that your SD-WAN network delivers on its promises, such as seamless connectivity, efficient data routing, and optimal performance. By tracking network metrics continuously, you can verify that your SD-WAN setup is functioning as intended and address any deviations immediately.
This proactive approach to monitoring not only helps resolve immediate issues but also prevents future disruptions. With ongoing visibility into your network’s health, you can ensure your SD-WAN network stays optimized, supports your business needs, and remains reliable for the long term.
Conquering Network Issues with
Expert Insights and Effective Strategies
Welcome to our blog, where we address the common challenge of identifying network issues and provide you with effective solutions. At times, network problems can be elusive, causing disruptions, performance bottlenecks, and frustration. But fret not, because we are here to help. Our team of experts has extensive experience in tackling network issues head-on, and we are excited to share our knowledge and insights with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! Obkio's tool can monitor all types of networks. It also monitor QoS (Quality of Service) to reduce latency, jitter and packet loss in case of a network congestion.
Obkio monitors the real performance of SD-WAN networks from the end-user perspective, by class of service, to find and fix issues quickly. Obkio monitors the impact of your SD-WAN network by injecting synthetic traffic to monitor from the end-user perspective.
By installing Obkio before your SD-WAN migration, Obkio's Agents use synthetic traffic to monitor, from the end-user perspective, the performance of your previous network, the migration itself, and your new SD-WAN service.
Monitoring your SD-WAN migration is critical to the migration's success. And, your SD-WAN vendor won't can't do it for you. Monitor your migration to identify issues the could affect it beforehand, issues that could cause you to stop or backtrack, and then monitor the SD-WAN service promise after you've migrated.
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