NetQoS Aims For The Enterprise

NetQoS made its SuperAgent 2.0 appliance more appealing to larger enterprises by enabling administrators to set up multiple appliances from a central console.

After surviving startup mode during the worst of the recession, network performance management vendor NetQoS Inc. on Monday announced a major new release of its SuperAgent tool.

The Austin, Texas, company made its SuperAgent 2.0 appliance more appealing to larger enterprises by enabling administrators to set up multiple appliances from a central console and by gathering and consolidating performance data collected by the appliances into the central console.

SuperAgent 2.0 can break down application response times by network, systems and applications, allowing operators to speed fault isolation among those components. Although it doesnt provide root cause analysis, it can complement "some of the core fault management solutions," said Dennis Drogseth, vice president at Enterprise Management Associates Inc., a consulting and research firm in Boulder, Colo.

SuperAgent 2.0 does not require an agent to be installed on each end system. Rather, it attaches to a mirror port on a network switch to access network traffic for monitoring and analysis.

The new release also adds usability enhancements in its alarm notification function. The tool can now automatically baseline and set performance thresholds for sending alarms.

"There is also a sensitivity dial based on a combination of recent events and past history. You can set sensitivity at a global or individual alarm level," described Michael Turner, executive vice president of NetQoS.

The new version of the tool also includes reporting enhancements and a set up Wizard to simplify installation.

"The good thing about them is that they are hitting the sweet spots – application and network performance troubleshooting. The way its designed [makes for a] fairly easy deployment, and the reports you see are very clear and easy to follow. And theyre designed with the understanding of what troubleshooting processes are like," said Drogseth.

SuperAgent 2.0, available now, is priced starting at $45,000 for the management console and $9,500 for each data collector.

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