Network Instruments® Expands Insight into UC, Virtual, and Distributed Environments

MINNEAPOLIS, June 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Network Instruments, a worldwide leader in network and application performance monitoring, announced today the latest release of its resource and infrastructure monitoring solution Observer Infrastructure (OI). OI offers significantly expanded visibility and monitoring of applications, as well as complex virtual and cloud environments.

Through the integration of advanced flow technologies such as Flexible NetFlow, IPFIX, Citrix AppFlow, and Cisco Medianet Performance Monitor, OI queries systems, applications, and critical resources to provide advanced insight into the services and conversations traversing the infrastructure.

Harnessing Flow Technologies
IT teams can now utilize NetFlow and IPFIX within OI to obtain detailed traffic metrics valuable for troubleshooting, assessing bandwidth usage, and optimizing infrastructure performance. In addition, new product support for AppFlow allows OI to provide enhanced analysis of applications traversing Citrix virtual environments. Capturing AppFlow records generated by Citrix Netscaler application delivery controllers, OI tracks application status codes, average request response times, and average turn response times. All of these new metrics are then correlated alongside existing application and infrastructure data, providing a complete view of performance.

"When expanding networks through cloud, virtualization, or building remote sites, teams are often forced to sacrifice visibility," said Charles Thompson, director of product strategy for Network Instruments. "But with Network Instruments, engineers do not face those limitations. OI allows teams to track resource and infrastructure health regardless of the environment, pre-emptively detecting issues before they impact service delivery. OI also serves as a component of our overall performance management platform, which combines intelligence from flow technologies and packet analysis presenting a complete picture of IT activity." 

Cisco: End-to-End UC Tracking
As companies expand use of video and voice, integrated views of communications and the underlying infrastructure are essential for ensuring consistent performance. The newest OI version now supports monitoring of Cisco endpoints, offering complete video and voice session views -- from the call manager to the Cisco desktop client or handset. In addition, organizations with Cisco Medianet can use advanced OI tracking to monitor media communications traversing Medianet-enabled devices. OI reports on critical quality metrics including jitter, latency, packet loss, MOS, and conceal ratios.

Virtual and Public Cloud Monitoring
OI continues to enhance its in-depth tracking of critical virtual and cloud components, guaranteeing seamless performance monitoring across any environment. The latest version provides increased insight into VMware virtual networks with the added monitoring of vCenter. Network engineers can track the management, provisioning, and updating of VMware vSphere hosts. The product also expanded monitoring of critical cloud components. Organizations using Amazon AWS will now be able to query and validate the performance of the Amazon DynamoDB managed service and the elastic load-balancing capability of EC2 environments.

About Network Instruments, LLC
Established in 1994, Network Instruments is an industry leader in application and network management. It provides products that optimize performance and speed problem resolution, helping ensure delivery of critical applications for businesses worldwide. Network Instruments delivers these benefits through a seamlessly integrated line of software and hardware systems that are precision engineered for exact network monitoring and analysis. For more information, visit www.networkinstruments.com.

Copyright © 2012 by Network Instruments. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE Network Instruments