Observability for Storage Over Ethernet: From SNMP to Streaming Insights

As enterprise storage shifts from Fibre Channel to Ethernet, one thing becomes clear: traditional monitoring methods are no longer enough.

In Fibre Channel environments, purpose-built tools offered targeted insights into predictable storage behavior. But Ethernet-based storage fabrics are dynamic and diverse. They carry not just storage traffic, but also application, management, and inter-service communication—all on the same wire. That mix brings unprecedented performance sensitivity and complexity.

Unfortunately, many organizations are still leaning on legacy SNMP polling and device-centric metrics—tools that were never designed to detect the kinds of issues that can silently undermine Ethernet-based storage performance. That’s why modern observability needs a complete reframe.

What You Need to Watch (and Why It’s Hard to See)

Let’s break down the core performance killers in Ethernet storage fabrics:

Microbursts: These are ultra-short spikes in traffic that overwhelm egress ports for a fraction of a second. They’re too brief for SNMP to detect, but they can cause packet drops that cripple storage I/O.

Solution: Arista’s LANZ (Latency Analyzer) feature detects these events by tracking queue lengths in real time. Coupled with deep buffers (like those in Arista’s R-series), it allows both mitigation and visibility.

Latency Hotspots: Not all delays are obvious. Sometimes one NIC, one link, or one path consistently adds a few milliseconds and that adds up fast across storage flows. 

Solution: Tools like Path Tracer and Inband Network Telemetry (INT) help you pinpoint exactly where delays are occurring across the fabric.

Fabric Congestion: Congestion isn't always sustained or predictable. It often appears as intermittent, high-impact events that only show up under specific traffic patterns.

Solution: Streaming telemetry and ECN marking offer early warnings, while tools like CloudVision give full-context correlation to diagnose root causes.

What Modern Observability Looks Like

With Arista’s EOS and CloudVision, observability isn’t just deeper; it’s integrated, actionable, and built for real-time resolution.

Streaming Telemetry: Arista switches stream live stats (including interface counters, queue depths, buffer use, and flow data) to CloudVision using the NetDB model. No polling. No lag. Full visibility.

Advanced Flow Tracing: Track how specific storage sessions traverse the network, hop by hop. Identify path changes, bottlenecks, or asymmetric routing behaviors.

Inband Network Telemetry (INT): INT embeds real-time metadata inside packets themselves, including queue depth, latency, switch ID, and more. It gives you a detailed map of exactly what each flow experiences across the network.

Data Analyzer (DANZ): When deeper inspection is needed, DANZ enables high-resolution packet capture and filtering, without needing external tools or taps.

Root Cause Analysis with CloudVision

Modern observability isn’t just about watching the network; it’s about diagnosing what matters.

With CloudVision, you can:

• Visualize storage traffic flows: See which initiators and targets are talking, over which paths, and with what performance characteristics.
• Correlate network and storage/app data: Use CV UNO (Universal Network Observability) to align network telemetry with application context. You’ll know if slowness is caused by the fabric, the storage array, or something else entirely.
• Investigate historically: Access topology, aware event correlation, so you can go back in time to understand how and why issues occurred, even if they’ve already resolved.
  

Don’t Just React—Baseline and Predict

The most powerful observability isn’t reactive; it’s proactive.

Using historical telemetry in CloudVision, IT teams can establish performance baselines across key metrics like:

• Queue depths
• Latency per hop
• Throughput and IOPS
• Congestion frequency and severity

With these baselines, you can:

• Detect subtle performance drifts before they impact users
• Plan capacity based on actual trends
• Set smart alerts that focus on meaningful deviation,  not just raw thresholds

Over time, this lets you shift from firefighting to forecasting.

Final Thoughts: Visibility Is Non-Negotiable

Ethernet is increasingly the default transport for modern storage, especially in environments looking to consolidate fabrics, reduce costs, and embrace scale. But it’s also more sensitive and less predictable than Fibre Channel was.

That’s why observability must evolve. It’s not just about checking switch uptime; it’s about understanding how every packet moves, where every delay occurs, and how storage performance is being shaped by the network.

With Arista’s telemetry-driven platform, storage and network operations teams finally get the visibility they need to troubleshoot confidently, tune proactively, and operate predictably.

Let us show you how visibility can become your most powerful tool in building a faster, simpler, and more scalable storage fabric.