Network connectivity, monitoring and management specialist Emulex and application performance management (APM) company Dynatrace announced the launch of NetPod, an integrated solution combining Dynatrace’s Data Center (DC RUM) analysis with Emulex’s EndaceProbe Intelligent Network Recorders.
NetPod provides network teams with high-fidelity network and application transaction-level visibility and long-term packet storage.
The NetPod hardware-based EndaceProbe INRs are designed to provide 100 percent packet capture, nanosecond time stamping, and “back-in-time” playback capabilities, as well as a platform for user experience monitoring.
“Businesses that would find this platform useful include run network-centric applications, and rely on those applications to support revenue generation,” Mike Heumann, vice president of product marketing and alliances for Emulex, told eWEEK. “This includes most large businesses–since most rely on their network to interact with customers, as well as to run business intelligence applications–and ‘new era’ medium businesses that are heavily network-centric.”
The platform also enables optimization of the performance, scalability and predictability of all applications in the data center, including Citrix, SAP, Oracle, Siebel, Microsoft Exchange and many others.
NetPod combines several technologies to simplify and automate application transaction analysis, including continuous assessment of user experience and business impact of performance and availability issues and a comprehensive set of application protocol decodes, combined with application logic and user context.
Heumann noted the cost varies based on the speed and number of inputs to the system, the amount of storage required, and the application decodes purchased, but said pricing is competitive with current solutions in the market.
The platform is designed for high-speed 10/40/100Gb Ethernet networks to provide complete visibility across multiple tiers, infrastructure components and web and non-web applications.
NetPod intelligently monitors and records real-time application transactions across the most complex application delivery infrastructures spanning all leading load balancers, firewalls, servers, wireless area network (WAN) accelerators, and middleware.
The platform also boasts compatibility with third party products that require access to packets for security and compatibility with Dynatrace APM technologies for deep transaction tracing at the code level, synthetic monitoring, or mobile device monitoring.
“A recent survey conducted by Emulex showed that 73 percent of IT staff have unresolved network issues, and furthermore, 52 percent of respondents stated that network outages and performance degradations cost their business more than $500,000 per hour,” Heumann said. “Given the advances of server virtualization, private or hybrid clouds, software-defined networking, and the growing number of network-centric applications, this complexity, and the challenges associated with it, will only increase.”
NetPod will be available from select Emulex and Dynatrace partners with the requisite expertise in AA-NPM and APM. Forsythe and WWT were chosen as launch partners in North America because of their expertise in AA-NPM and APM, and ability to support NetPod customers.
“The key to mitigating these sorts of issues is to understand the context of the issue as shown by the network traffic, and understanding how these impact the applications that the businesses run on their networks,” he said. “NetPod is exactly the type of tool that allows users to accomplish this, and eliminate unsolved network issues quickly. The savings can be huge – avoiding one multi-hour outage can save millions of dollars in revenue and avoided opex, not to mention the damage to the enterprise’s reputation.”