Device Pinpoints Trouble

Application response time analysis provider NetQos Inc. is turning its focus to automation with a new version of its SuperAgent appliance planned for this month.

SuperAgent 4 boosts the level of automation to help users determine the source of performance problems among the network, server and applications, according to officials.

The centralized performance monitoring and reporting appliance, which watches transactions from a mirror port on a switch connected to the server, automatically discovers which servers and applications are running on a network, determines a base line of normal performance over different periods of time, and creates thresholds for exceptions to that performance.

The release launches investigations when thresholds are exceeded. Such investigations can include pings; traceroutes; SNMP polling; and gathering data on CPU utilization, memory utilization and top processes for a server or router.

"If there was a lot of data loss for a [certain] location, it opens an incident, then it runs several tests so that when you look at the incident, you see those tests it ran to see where the problem lies, such as congestion on the network. Those tests are a proactive jump on the investigation," said SuperAgent 4 beta user Patricia Miller, director of telecommunications services at Williams Scotsman Inc., a Baltimore-based mobile office space provider.

Such data collection, kicked off when response times are out of the normal range, helps administrators more easily pinpoint the source of sporadic problems that cant be solved with after-the-fact testing.

In isolating performance problems among the network, application and server, SuperAgent 4, which tracks and analyzes response times on any TCP/IP application, measures how long a transaction takes and breaks that into server time, application time and network time.

SuperAgent 4 will be available later this month priced starting at $34,500.