NetScout this week will make available a new appliance that is equipped to both monitor traffic like its probe technology and perform flow analysis.

The nGenius Application Fabric Monitor couples the company's nGenius Flow Recorder appliance with its nGenius Probe devices (which work with nGenius Performance Manager console software) to enable customers to get both feature sets in one device. The new device can monitor the infrastructure, collect data on application packets and perform flow analysis in one system.

"Combining these two capabilities into one box really had to do with faster troubleshooting and improving the mean time to repair," says Jim Frey, NetScout vice president of marketing. The appliance also features 5TB or 8TB of storage to accommodate the flow recording mechanism. Frey says it also performs onboard analysis, which means it doesn't have to send data to a client machine for analysis and that reduces the amount of time it takes to fix problems. "We take one stream of data coming in and execute both functions. It performs streaming capture for forensics and monitors to collect real-time statistics," Frey says.

The nGenius Application Fabric Monitor appliance costs about $80,000 and is used in concert with nGenius Performance Manager software. NetScout says it could be seen as an upgrade to existing probes in customer accounts. NetScout advises customers to install the device on critical links.

The appliance is part of NetScout's new strategy to use its network management expertise and acquired analytics technology to more quickly resolve application issues for customers.

Just last month, NetScout announced its Application Fabric strategy at Interop and showcased an appliance it developed from technology acquired last year with Quantiva, which offered a Web analytics service. NetScout used the technology to design nGenius Analytics, which, when employed with the vendor's nGenius Performance Manager software and distributed probes, can use network performance metrics collected across an enterprise to help IT managers get a better picture of end-to-end application performance management.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.