Apparent Networks, a leading provider of network fault and performance management solutions, today announced that it has released an updated version of PathView Cloud, its popular hosted network management service. The new version includes unique features for managing end-to-end network performance in virtualized environments.
With PathView Cloud’s virtualization-enabled analytics, IT and operations teams can, for the first time, understand network performance from the perspective of applications running on virtual machines. With this extended visibility, PathView Cloud lets IT teams quickly find and fix network performance problems, regardless of whether they occur in physical or virtual infrastructure.
To familiarize customers with PathView Cloud’s new features, Apparent Networks is offering a free, five-path version of the product. More information on this offer is available on the company’s Web site: www.apparentnetworks.com.
“Many enterprises are now wrapping up their initial forays into virtualization,” said Jim Melvin, president and CMO of Apparent Networks. “They’ve successfully virtualized low-hanging fruit like under-utilized servers and non-critical applications such as Web hosting and collaboration. But the next phase of virtualization will be more challenging because the targets are the revenue-generating, performance-sensitive applications that enterprises rely on. IT leaders won’t move forward unless they know their critical services will run properly and continue to meet the needs of the business. PathView Cloud gives enterprises the testing and troubleshooting tools they need to confidently take their virtualization initiatives to the next level.”
“Network performance has been a concern for enterprises as they evaluate using virtualized assets to support business-critical applications,” said Jim Metzler, vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates. “By providing the ability to more easily understand and address performance issues that can affect application delivery, tools like PathView Cloud can help organizations to move past those concerns and expand the range and importance of the types of applications they place on their virtual infrastructures.”
“The greatest value from virtualization will come with dynamic service delivery,” added Jim Melvin. “That’s where workloads can move readily from one VM to another or from datacenter to datacenter based upon load spikes, cost efficiencies, availability and disaster recovery scenarios. Before those moves can happen, operations teams must ensure that all the necessary resources, including network performance, are in place and ready for the switch. PathView Cloud is the only solution on the market today that can provide this insight, which is a critical component to dynamic virtual service delivery.”
PathView Cloud – Flexible, Affordable Hosted Service
PathView Cloud is a hosted, next-generation network management service. It measures the performance of complete network paths from source to destination, regardless of who owns or operates each of the network segments in that path. PathView Cloud is unique in its ability to test network performance to any endpoint in a virtualized infrastructure, including physical hardware resources and VMs. Other virtual machine management products on the market today focus only on monitoring how VMs interact with their virtual operating systems. Unlike those products, PathView Cloud provides information about the networking aspects of VMs.
Along with the ability to test to a virtual target, PathView Cloud can now also test the performance of network paths from a virtual machine. Specifically, the PathView Cloud component that conducts network path tests can be installed on virtual machines. This capability is initially available for VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisors. With no hardware required, this feature makes deployment of PathView Cloud easier, more flexible and less expensive.
Survey Underscores Virtual Server Performance Concerns
In developing the new release of PathView Cloud, the Apparent Networks development team took into consideration the results of recent research conducted by the company. That research consisted of a survey distributed to roughly 30,000 network managers at companies of all sizes. Results of the survey validated that network performance implications remain a major concern that curbs or delays the roll-out of virtual environments. Sixty percent of respondents said that virtual machine performance and infrastructure bottlenecks are the biggest issues they are facing with regard to virtual infrastructure, yet less than ten percent have adopted tools specifically designed to help with these issues. More information about the virtualization survey results is available at www.apparentnetworks.com.
Pricing and Availability
The latest version of PathView Cloud is available immediately. Apparent Networks is offering a free, five-path version of PathView Cloud. Pricing for additional paths is $4.95 per path per month. More information on the PathView Cloud service is available at www.apparentnetworks.com.
More information about the new version of PathView is available on the Apparent Networks blog.