on 05-28-2025 02:37 PM - edited on 05-28-2025 02:41 PM by emgarcia
HOST
Hello PANCasters. Today, our special guest will talk about Application Assurance with Prisma SD-WAN. We have with us:
Meena Sehar from the SASE Technical Marketing Engineering team.
Welcome Meena Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Meena:
Hi everyone, I'm Meena Sehar, and I truly appreciate the opportunity to be here today. As a Principal Technical Marketing Engineer on the SASE Product team at Palo Alto Networks, I bring over 4 years of specialized experience in SASE technologies. My role involves bridging the technical and business aspects of our SASE portfolio, ensuring that our solutions not only meet the evolving needs of modern enterprises but are also effectively communicated to our stakeholders.
With my deep expertise in SD-WAN and the broader SASE framework, I'm passionate about helping organizations understand and implement secure, efficient network solutions that drive their digital transformation journey forward."
HOST
Thank you, Meena. Let's start with the basics. How does Prisma SD-WAN approach application performance monitoring?
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Meena: Our approach is comprehensive but focused. Prisma SD-WAN uses a combination of real user traffic monitoring and synthetic probes to provide comprehensive full stack visibility for end user application experience. We track everything from basic TCP handshake success rates to sophisticated metrics like voice MOS scores and video jitter.
HOST
Thanks Meena. Many enterprise networks struggle with visibility into application performance. Could you break down the technical components that make up Prisma SD-WAN's monitoring architecture?
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Meena:
Prisma SD-WAN employs a multi-layered approach combining four key monitoring mechanisms. First, we analyze real user traffic by measuring specific parameters including TCP initialization & transaction success/failure rates, RTT (Round Trip Time) and SRT (Server Response Time).
Second, we implement automated reachability probes. When our system detects a 3-way handshake failure, the ION device generates synthetic probe packets mimicking the failed TCP SYN. These probes run every minute on the specific path to continuously verify application reachability status.
Third, we utilize Link Quality Monitoring, or LQM, which provides automated and continuous path monitoring for branch-to-data center and branch-to-branch gateway VPN connections. LQM specifically assesses four critical metrics: latency, loss, jitter, and link MOS (Mean Opinion Score).
We've recently introduced Service Health Probes in our latest release, which can monitor up to eight health probe endpoints simultaneously across all path types. These probes support various protocols including HTTP/S with transaction time monitoring and content validation, DNS with response time analysis, and ICMP for round-trip metrics.
Finally, with natively integrated Autonomous Digital Experience Management, Enterprises can benefit from proactive, Multi WAN path visibility for both SAAS and Private Applications.
HOST
Great. Let's dive into a real customer scenario - how do these monitoring capabilities come together when managing critical SaaS applications?
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Meena: Let's take a common scenario we see with businesses using critical SaaS applications like CRM systems. These applications are often sensitive to latency issues but can handle some packet loss.
Our system continuously monitors the application's performance across all available paths - whether that's direct internet, VPN, or backup circuits. When we detect performance degradation on one path, we can automatically shift traffic to better-performing alternatives and ensure that SLAs are always maintained.
When all available paths are degraded, Link Optimization techniques like FEC and Packet Duplication can also be used to provide SLA assurance for applications.
To overcome performance degradations for SAAS and Internet bound traffic, We have recently launched Application acceleration capabilities with Prisma SD-WAN, which provide Layer 4 and Layer 7 acceleration for traffic originating from Prisma SD-WAN branch sites. This differentiating capability enables faster application access and increased throughput.
Prisma SD-WAN auto remediates performance degradations using these capabilities and for the awareness of the network administrator application & user experience monitoring capabilities are also natively supported. For example, if a flow violated the configured SLA for an Application, and a remedial action was enforced based on performance policy, then the flow browser indicates the action taken along with the performance metrics.
HOST
OK, so many organizations operate in environments where traditional connectivity isn't viable. Could you explain how this monitoring and policy framework adapts to handle these challenging environments?
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Meena: One interesting use case involves physical security applications in remote locations using LEO satellite and 5G connectivity. These applications, like video surveillance and access control, are critical but operate in challenging network conditions. We use advanced techniques like packet duplication across multiple paths to ensure reliability. If one path experiences issues, we can immediately duplicate critical traffic across alternate paths to maintain performance.
HOST
Great. So for teams managing these systems, what kind of visibility and control do they have?
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Meena: We provide comprehensive visibility through our performance policy framework. Teams can set specific SLA requirements for different applications - for instance, maintaining a minimum MOS score for voice applications or maximum latency thresholds for critical business applications. The system not only monitors these metrics but actively enforces them through intelligent path selection and automatic remediation. When SLA violations occur, we raise incidents and provide detailed insights to help IT teams understand and resolve them quickly. Network Administrators can leverage one of several alerting and notifications mechanisms that we have like Email or Servicenow to be notified immediately of high priority incidents. Both Email notification and Servicenow integration are natively supported on the CloudBlades platform, which means Enterprises can automatically have Servicenow tickets opened or updated as Prisma SD-WAN incidents are created and resolved.
HOST
Really good info Meena. As we wrap up, what would you say is the key takeaway for organizations looking to improve their application performance?
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Meena: The key is having both visibility and automated control. It's not enough to just know there's a problem - you need systems that can automatically respond to maintain performance and end user experience. Our approach combines detailed monitoring with intelligent, automated responses to ensure critical applications perform consistently, even in challenging conditions.
HOST
As we reach the end of our discussion, I want to thank you, Meena, for providing such detailed insights into Prisma SD-WAN's application assurance capabilities. Your explanations of the performance monitoring architecture and real-world implementations have been particularly valuable.
For our PANCast™ listeners, as always, the transcript of this episode will be on live.paloaltonetworks.com, and you will also find links related to this episode.
#PrismaSDWAN
