Network Instruments, a provider of analysis solutions for network intelligence and continuous availability, announced today that its Observer monitoring platform now provides visibility and in-depth analysis of application performance and traffic within both virtualized and physical environments.
Observer's expanded virtual monitoring capabilities go beyond traditional analysis tools that only provide limited views of virtualized networks, the vendor contends. Network teams using Observer can now access a complete view of virtual traffic traversing physical networks, between different virtual machine hosts, and between virtual machines on the same host.
All virtual traffic and communications flowing within the virtual machine host can be copied and sent to a GigaStor appliance for back-in-time analysis or the Observer Reporting Server for enterprise-wide performance reports.
In a virtual environment, "the challenge has always been, 'How do I see communication from one virtual machine to another virtual machine when those two virtual machines live within the same host, and their traffic doesn't hit the network?'" Charles Thompson, product manager for Network Instruments, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We are putting software within the virtual machine host which will give us a perspective, vision inside of the host, so that we can determine the different tiers of a multi-tiered application and the performance from tier to tier. That also allows us to see the client application communication, so what we are able to do is not only be able to witness whether the end user is experiencing degraded performance, but we are also able to easily determine which component of the application is causing the performance degradation."
Large organizations may have "a number of different GigaStors-these technologies which would acquire the data," Thompson continues. "But all of the data is going to be processed and reported up to one top aggregation point. So the user simply has to go to a single interface and look at the performance across the entire enterprise, all applications, all of the application tiers, from a single vantage point," he says. "That helps speed the troubleshooting of problems as well."
The Network Instruments Virtual TAP (Test Access Point) is a key component within the expanded Observer virtualized offering, the vendor states. To access this functionality, users install a Network Instruments software probe into the VM host environment, where they can copy and send the data to their retrospective analysis device, analyzer console, or a third-party purpose-built device. Current maintenance customers gain these capabilities at no charge. Go here for more information.