NetScout looks to tie management data

IT staff members at Mohegan Sun aren't allowed to bet at the casino, and they didn't want to gamble with managing an Ethernet network that supports 6,200 slot machines and 7,500 switches, routers and servers.

IT executives at the Uncasville, Conn., casino say that's why they decided to go with a new version of NetScout's nGenius Performance Manager. NetScout this week will introduce Version 2.0 of the software and nGenius Probe Firmware 6.0 for its hardware probes.

The upgrades let the software and hardware combination accept data from homegrown applications, monitor protocol-specific traffic - such as Cisco's NetFlow and Foundry Networks' sFlow - and consolidate network and application performance data in one management interface.

NGenius Performance Manager runs on a server and communicates with the hardware probes to collect application and traffic data. The software also can poll devices and servers to collect performance metrics. In this release NetScout will offer the software in a packaged appliance.

For the past few years, Mohegan's Jake Star and his network team have used nGenius Performance Manager 1.4 to monitor the casino's Cisco switches and routers, and Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold system management software to track the status and availability of its more than 90 Windows NT servers, seven IBM iSeries AS/400 mainframes and 10 RS/6000 Unix servers. But the company wanted to bring those functions under one platform.

"We needed something to reduce the blame game between the network and applications," says Star, vice president of computer services.

With new features in Version 2.0, Star says the casino slowly can phase out its current network monitoring package - Ipswitch's software. "NetScout will be like having two tools in one," he says.

The casino plans to upgrade its nGenius Performance Manager 1.4 software to Version 2.0 next month. Currently, Mohegan Sun manages the overall slot machine network, but it wants to manage individual slot machines. Until each machine is given an IP address and connected to the Ethernet network, the IT staff can't track the status and health of individual machines, Star says.

New features in NetScout's software could help him track all devices on the Ethernet network from a single management interface, he says.

NetScout, which competes with Network Associates and Concord Communications, is looking to provide its customers with more ways to slice and dice the data its software collects, says Stephen Elliot, senior analyst at IDC. NetScout made its software easier to use, but the company could do more to integrate and get value out of other sources of data in enterprise networks, he says.

"NetScout's strength is in the network, and they are starting to expand into applications, but there can always be more work done on bringing up the data they collect in, say, storage and other systems," Elliot says.

NetScout's nGenius Performance Manager 2.0 costs $50,000, and its nGenius Probe Firmware 6.0 starts at about $8,000 per probe. The products are scheduled to be available by the end of the month.