As more network management moves to the cloud, more and more network equipment manufacturers are building network devices with remote packet capture as part of their platform. These cloud-managed networking systems with built-in packet capture and web-based analysis tools provide wonderful new opportunities for network and security operations, IT pros, and managed service providers.
The folks at CloudShark recently put together a whitepaper focusing on the use of pcaps in cloud-managed network troubleshooting. Here's an excerpt:
When solving problems in a networked environment, there is no substitute for looking at the packets. In many cases, a packet capture should be one of the first steps in troubleshooting a problem. That first step might indicate that the problem is not the network, point at who is responsible, and immediately free up the network engineer’s time to work on issues under their control...
... Vendors building cloud-managed network tools have a unique opportunity to provide remote packet capture as part of their platform. Since users already have access to their distributed network devices through a unified web-portal, building native packet capture into the devices, controlled through the portal, expands the use case of network devices beyond passing packets or deploying firewalls, making them valuable capture points as well.
You can download the full whitepaper here.