OCI FastConnect monitoring
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect is a dedicated, private connection that provides a secure and high-performance link between your on-premises network and Oracle Cloud. Unlike standard internet-based connections, FastConnect offers consistent, low-latency connectivity for mission-critical workloads by bypassing public internet routes.
Overview
Continuous monitoring of OCI FastConnect is crucial to ensure network reliability, optimal performance, and cost efficiency. Site24x7’s OCI monitoring module provides deep visibility into the health and performance of your FastConnect connections, enabling you to proactively detect degradation, latency increases, or configuration issues.
With Site24x7, you can automatically discover FastConnect connections using OCI APIs, visualize bandwidth usage, track circuit statuses, and set up alerts for anomalies, all from a unified monitoring console. This proactive insight helps maintain the stability of hybrid and multi-cloud architectures that depend on high-speed, dedicated OCI connectivity.
Site24x7’s integration with OCI FastConnect provides these monitors:
- Virtual Circuit: Monitors the logical FastConnect connection to track bandwidth usage, traffic direction, and circuit health across your dedicated link.
- Cross Connect: Monitors the physical cross connect at the OCI location to detect port level issues, errors, and link status changes in real time.
- Cross Connect Group: Monitors a group of cross connects together to help you understand aggregate capacity, redundancy health, and overall link performance.
Use cases
- A financial services company uses a dedicated FastConnect virtual circuit for data replication between its on-premises data center and Oracle Cloud Object Storage. During routine business hours, the Site24x7 Virtual Circuit monitor detects unusually high outbound bandwidth utilization, nearing the circuit’s capacity threshold.The operations team receives an instant alert and identifies the spike due to, an unplanned bulk data transfer job. By throttling non-critical transfers, they restore optimal performance and prevent latency issues for customer-facing applications.
- An e-commerce site relies on dual Cross Connects at its OCI region to maintain high availability for customer transactions. One of the physical links begins experiencing increasing Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) errors and input drops, signaling a hardware-level issue. Site24x7’s Cross Connect monitor flags the degraded port and notifies the team immediately. Operations reroute the traffic to the standby link, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity while the failing port is replaced by OCI support engineers.
Benefits of Site24x7's OCI FastConnect integration
With OCI FastConnect's integration with Site24x7 you can:
- View the status of each virtual circuit in one place.
- Set alerts for outages or unusual traffic patterns.
- Spot slowdowns early because performance metrics are continuously tracked.
- Get historical data that helps you understand trends and plan capacity.
- Relate FastConnect issues to other OCI services you monitor.
- Reduce troubleshooting time because the data points are easy to trace and compare.
Setup and configuration
- Site24x7 uses cross-tenancy access to monitor your resources using Site24x7's tenancy user. Log in to your Site24x7 account and create a specific policy to allow Site24x7 to view your resources without affecting your security.
- On the Integrate OCI Monitor page, select FastConnect from the Services to be discovered list.
Permissions
Ensure that Site24x7 receives the following permissions to monitor the FastConnect:
- VIRTUAL_CIRCUIT_READ
- CROSS_CONNECT_READ
- CROSS_CONNECT_GROUP_READ
Polling frequency
Site24x7 queries OCI service-level APIs according to the set polling frequency (from once a minute to once a day) to collect metrics from a Virtual Circuit, Cross Connect, or a Cross Connect Group monitor.
Supported metrics
The supported metrics for FastConnect monitors are provided below.
Virtual Circuit
| Metric name | Description | Statistics | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bits Received | Number of bits received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits |
| Bits Sent | Number of bits sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits |
| Bit Rate Received | Rate at which bits are received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits per second |
| Bit Rate Sent | Rate at which bits are sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits per second |
| Bytes Received | Number of bytes received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bytes |
| Bytes Sent | Number of bytes sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bytes |
| Connection State | The values are up (1) or down (0). For a virtual circuit, the operational state of the virtual circuit's interface. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
| Packets with Errors | Number of packets dropped at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Discarded | Number of packets discarded at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Received | Number of packets received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Sent | Number of packets sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| IPv4 BGP Session State | The values are up (1) or down (0). The status of the IPv4 BGP session for a virtual circuit. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
| IPv6 BGP Session State | The values are up (1) or down (0). The status of the IPv6 BGP session for a virtual circuit. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
Cross Connect
| Metric name | Description | Statistics | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bits Received | Number of bits received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits |
| Bits Sent | Number of bits sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits |
| Bit Rate Received | Rate at which bits are received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits per second |
| Bit Rate Sent | Rate at which bits are sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits per second |
| Bytes Received | Number of bytes received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bytes |
| Bytes Sent | Number of bytes sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bytes |
| Connection State | The values are up (1) or down (0). For a virtual circuit, the operational state of the virtual circuit's interface. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
| Packets with Errors | Number of packets dropped at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Discarded | Number of packets discarded at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Received | Number of packets received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Sent | Number of packets sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| IPv4 BGP Session State | The values are up (1) or down (0). The status of the IPv4 BGP session for a virtual circuit. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
| IPv6 BGP Session State | The values are up (1) or down (0). The status of the IPv6 BGP session for a virtual circuit. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
Cross Connect Group
| Metric name | Description | Statistics | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bits Received | Number of bits received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits |
| Bits Sent | Number of bits sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits |
| Bit Rate Received | Rate at which bits are received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits per second |
| Bit Rate Sent | Rate at which bits are sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bits per second |
| Bytes Received | Number of bytes received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bytes |
| Bytes Sent | Number of bytes sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Bytes |
| Connection State | The values are up (1) or down (0). For a virtual circuit, the operational state of the virtual circuit's interface. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
| Packets with Errors | Number of packets dropped at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Discarded | Number of packets discarded at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Received | Number of packets received on the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| Packets Sent | Number of packets sent from the FastConnect interface at the Oracle end of the connection. | Sum | Packets |
| IPv4 BGP Session State | The values are up (1) or down (0). The status of the IPv4 BGP session for a virtual circuit. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
| IPv6 BGP Session State | The values are up (1) or down (0). The status of the IPv6 BGP session for a virtual circuit. | Maximum | Binary (1 or 0) |
Custom metrics
The FastConnect monitors include standard traffic metrics from OCI along with calculated metrics that help you understand link usage, loss patterns, and reliability.
| Metric name | Description | Statistics | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Bits | Total number of bits handled by the virtual circuit during the polling period. Useful for understanding raw data volume. | Average | Bits |
| Total Bit Rate | Average bit rate flowing through the virtual circuit. Helps identify high bandwidth usage or saturation trends. | Average | Bits per second |
| Total Bytes | Total number of bytes processed by the circuit. Useful for capacity planning and billing analysis. | Average | Bytes |
| Total Packets | Total count of packets transmitted and received. Helps track traffic load and packet level behavior. | Average | Count |
| Error Rate | Percentage of packets that failed compared to the total handled. Helps detect hardware faults, cable issues, and CRC errors. | Average | Percent |
| Discard Rate | Percentage of packets dropped due to buffer overflow, congestion, or policy. Useful for troubleshooting congestion or QoS issues. | Average | Percent |
| Receive vs Sent Ratio | Ratio showing whether the link is handling more inbound or outbound traffic. Helps analyze traffic direction patterns. | Average | Number |
| Error to Discard Ratio | Ratio of packet errors to packet discards. Helps distinguish between physical layer issues and congestion based drops. | Average | Number |
| Packet Success Rate | Percentage of packets successfully handled without errors or discards. Indicates overall link reliability. | Average | Percent |
| Loss Rate | Percentage of traffic lost due to errors or discards. Helps in identifying reliability issues. | Average | Percent |
| Packet Delivery Efficiency | Measures how much of the traffic is usable and error free. Useful for performance tuning. | Average | Number |
| Dropped vs Error Contribution | Shows how much of the traffic loss is caused by errors versus discards. Helps with root cause analysis. | Average | Percent |
Threshold configuration
To configure thresholds for a FastConnect monitor:
- Log in to your Site24x7 account and navigate to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability.
- Click Add Threshold Profile.
- Select FastConnect from the Monitor Type drop-down menu and provide an appropriate name in the Display Name field.
- The supported metrics are displayed in the Threshold Configuration section. You can set threshold values for all the metrics mentioned above.
- Click Save.
Forecast
Estimate future values of all the above supported metrics with the Forecast feature. Predict future points of the performance metrics (measurement of resource usage) based on historical observations and make informed decisions.
Licensing
Each Virtual Circuit, Cross Connect, and Cross Connect Group monitor utilizes one basic monitor license.
Viewing FastConnect data
To monitor your Object Storage environment, log in to your Site24x7 account and navigate to Cloud > OCI > Virtual Circuit, Cross Connect, or Cross Connect Group.
Monitor data
The monitor data for the FastConnect monitors are given below.
Virtual Circuit
Summary
The Summary tab provides a comprehensive overview of the events timeline and metrics, presenting insightful charts that shed light on the performance of the Virtual Circuit monitor.
DRG Attachment
The DRG Attachments tab displays the DRG attachments details and the list of DRG Attachments monitors associated with the Virtual Circuit monitor. Click the desired monitor name to view the DRG Attachments monitor data.
Configuration
The Configuration tab summarizes essential details of the Virtual Circuit monitor, including its Display Name, Region, Compartment ID, and other configuration details.
Zia Forecast
The Zia Forecast tab displays the forecast chart with future points of a performance metric (measurement of resource usage) based on historical time series data. Thirty days of historical data is used to predict what your metric usage will be in the next seven days.
Outages
The Outages tab provides details on an outage's start time, end time, duration, and comments (if any).
Notes
The Notes tab displays details like OCID, Region, and Monitor Licensing Category. Set and view the Threshold and Availability Profile and the Notification Profile according to the user in this tab.
Log Report
This tab provides a consolidated report of the Virtual Circuit monitor's log status, which can be downloaded as a CSV file.
Alert Logs
The Alert Logs tab displays a chronological list of all triggered alerts related to the Virtual Circuit monitor. This tab helps you trace alert history and severity to assess issues and validate threshold settings.
Cross Connect
Summary
The Summary tab delivers a comprehensive overview of the events timeline and metrics, presenting insightful charts that shed light on the performance of the Cross Connect monitor.
Virtual Circuit
The Virtual Circuit tab displays the details and the list of Virtual Circuit monitors associated with the Cross Connect monitor. Click the desired monitor name to view the Virtual Circuit monitor data.
If the Virtual Circuit is colocation based, Site24x7 maps it as a child monitor under the corresponding Cross Connect or Cross Connect Group. This helps you see the physical and logical components together, making it easier to track link health and troubleshoot issues across the entire FastConnect setup.
Configuration
The Configuration tab summarizes essential details of the Cross Connect monitor, including its Display Name, Region, Compartment ID, and other configuration details.
Zia Forecast
The Zia Forecast tab displays the forecast chart with future points of a performance metric (measurement of resource usage) based on historical time series data. Thirty days of historical data is used to predict what your metric usage will be in the next seven days.
Outages
The Outages tab provides details on an outage's start time, end time, duration, and comments (if any).
Notes
The Notes tab displays any notes related to your integrated monitor and inventory details like OCID, Region, and Monitor Licensing Category. Set and view the Threshold and Availability Profile and the Notification Profile according to the user in this tab.
Log Report
This tab provides a consolidated report of the Cross Connect monitor's log status, which can be downloaded as a CSV file.
Alert Logs
The Alert Logs tab displays a chronological list of all triggered alerts related to the Cross Connect monitor. This tab helps you trace alert history and severity to assess issues and validate threshold settings.
Cross Connect Group
Cross Connect Group
Summary
The Summary tab provides a comprehensive overview of the events timeline and metrics, presenting insightful charts that shed light on the performance of the Cross Connect Group monitor.
Virtual Circuit
The Virtual Circuit tab displays the details and the list of Virtual Circuit monitors associated with the Cross Connect Group monitor. Click the desired monitor name to view the Virtual Circuit monitor data.
Configuration
The Configuration tab summarizes essential details of the Cross Connect Group monitor, including its Display Name, Region, Compartment ID, and other configuration details.
Zia Forecast
The Zia Forecast tab displays the forecast chart with future points of a performance metric (measurement of resource usage) based on historical time series data. Thirty days of historical data is used to predict what your metric usage will be in the next seven days.
Outages
The Outages tab provides details on an outage's start time, end time, duration, and comments (if any).
Notes
The Notes tab displays any notes related to your integrated monitor and inventory details like OCID, Region, and Monitor Licensing Category. Set and view the Threshold and Availability Profile and the Notification Profile according to the user in this tab.
Log Report
This tab provides a consolidated report of the Cross Connect Group monitor's log status, which can be downloaded as a CSV file.
Alert Logs
The Alert Logs tab displays a chronological list of all triggered alerts related to the Cross Connect Group monitor. This tab helps you trace alert history and severity to assess issues and validate threshold settings.