Resonate automates apps, net mgmt.
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ORLANDO - Resonate this week will unveil the latest versions of its service-level and traffic-management products, adding automation to correct server problems or redistribute server loads.
Here at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Resonate will introduce Version 2.0 of Commander, software that manages applications, network devices and systems in relation to Web site and transaction performance, and Version 4.0 of Central Dispatch, the company's LAN-based traffic-management software.
The enhancements to Commander give it the ability to collect network and system data, such as information about open threads and memory usage, and use it to automatically restart a process or reboot a server if there is a problem. It can also reroute traffic by telling load-balancing switches to send traffic to servers that are not experiencing problems or heavy workloads.
Commander includes a policy engine that runs on a dedicated server, plus agents that are installed throughout a network. It also features modules that plug into specific operating systems and applications. For example, new to this version is support for Microsoft Internet Information Server, Windows 2000 and SQL. All reports and alarms are accessible via a Web browser.
"Commander can now embed itself in the system and look around to spot impending problems. It then goes beyond e-mailing or paging someone as its automated action," says Bill Gassman, an analyst at Gartner. "It can decide to slow down the load on any given server to prevent that problem."
He says Resonate is one of the first vendors to give software that much control and warns users to be careful when handing over their networks to an automated, decision maker.
"Completely automating things like load balancing can create some problems, like a traffic cop directing all traffic to a different road. That road will be congested, too," Gassman says. "But for systems that have spiky traffic and require high availability, it's worth trying."
Harry Nicholos, assistant director for Unix Web services at North Carolina State University, says Commander and Central Dispatch have saved his staff a lot of "manpower time" when maintaining the Web site for 30,000 students and users.
Although the university has not yet determined the amount of money saved, Nicholos says using Resonate products lets him "add capacity at a much more incremental and granular level," because they show how simply reconfiguring servers or rerouting traffic can prevent slowdowns.
Central Dispatch collects data on CPU load and server health, and it can now test network latency to determine session latency in real time. However, unlike Commander, it doesn't take automated actions based on the information. Also new to this release is support for User Datagram Protocol traffic scheduling, including streaming media, voice over IP, DNS and proprietary protocols.
The products work with Cisco Arrowpoint, Nortel Alteon and F5 switches. Commander 2.0 is built on BEA Systems' WebLogic server and an Oracle database. Pricing starts at $60,000. Depending on configuration, Central Dispatch 4.0 costs between $9,000 and $40,000.
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