NetQoS Performance Center Restores Visibility into Network and Application Performance Data across Virtual Environments

AUSTIN, Texas – September 1, 2009 – For all its benefits, server virtualization masks critical data that IT organizations need to ensure optimal delivery of applications across the network to end users. With new virtualization capabilities, the NetQoS® Performance Center unearths this data and combines it with network and application performance information from the physical environment to show how well the entire infrastructure is supporting application delivery.

“Assuring the performance of virtualized applications is a problem that must be solved if virtualization is to extend beyond ‘low hanging fruit’ and include business-critical applications. Part of the solution is a set of response time based metrics that can accurately characterize the performance of applications running in a virtual environment,” said Bernd Harzog, CEO and founder, APM Experts. “The network-based approach to virtualized infrastructure performance management is compelling and a massive opportunity. Its non-intrusive characteristics can handle the dynamic nature of virtualized environments and provide the intelligence to understand where performance bottlenecks exist.”

The NetQoS Performance Center bridges the gap between the virtual and physical environments by collecting and analyzing application response times, traffic flows via Cisco® IOS® NetFlow, and device performance statistics within multi-tiered, virtual hosts as well as into and out of the virtual environment. The new offerings include:

•   NetQoS Response Time Virtual Collector: This software only version of the NetQoS Performance Center application response time monitoring capability runs as a virtual machine in VMware, Microsoft or Citrix environments to provide visibility into the communications between each virtual server residing on the same physical machine. In addition, the Virtual Collector monitors the traffic between each virtual machine and the physical infrastructure.

•   NetQoS NetFlow Reporting for Virtualized Environments: The NetQoS Performance Center network traffic analysis capability now supports NetFlow statistics exported from the Cisco Nexus™ 1000v and the VMware vSwitch to help network groups monitor how virtual application traffic is impacting network performance.

•   NetQoS Performance Center Integration with VMware vCenter™: The NetQoS Performance Center retrieves device health information from the VMware vCenter API to report data such as the number of virtual machines running on a host, CPU utilization, disk usage, and memory utilization.

By integrating the performance data from these three sources in one management console, the NetQoS Performance Center is uniquely positioned to help IT organizations understand how applications are performing across the infrastructure and better manage virtualization. For instance, the ability to measure the before and after impact of infrastructure changes, isolate the source of latency to the network, application or server, and predict bandwidth consumption will help IT organizations solve problems faster and make more informed decisions about which applications to virtualize. In addition, correlating device health information alongside response time and traffic flow information in the NetQoS Performance Center is important as network groups troubleshoot latency and other performance issues in real time.
 
“No single metric – including traditional metrics such as CPU or memory utilization – is enough to ensure application performance in complex environments, especially when part of that environment has been virtualized,” said Matt Sherrod, vice president of product management for NetQoS. “The value proposition of the NetQoS Performance Center is combining key performance data such as application response times, traffic flows, and resource-based statistics from both the virtual and physical infrastructures in one management console to give visibility and control back to network groups and help them ensure successful delivery of IT services to their end users.”

NetQoS will speak about “Removing the Performance Obstacles to Virtualizing Mission Critical Applications” at VMworld San Francisco in the Cisco booth #2118 on Wednesday, September 2 at 10:50 a.m. PDT.