This week it’s Fluke Network’s Visual Performance Manager (as well as Visual Uptime) users’ turn to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences. Under the banner “Network SuperVision” Fluke Networks has expanded from pure-play network infrastructure monitoring into data and voice application performance management over the past two years. On the market since the fall of 2007, Visual Performance Manager is positioned squarely in the infrastructure services management quadrant of the performance management matrix we showed you a few weeks back. However it also provides a lot of application performance data that impacts users.
Well suited to monitoring application performance for very large distributed organizations like banks, retailers and insurance companies or companies with global supply chains, Visual Performance Manager is also used by carriers and managed service providers to deliver application performance monitoring as a value added service in what Fluke Networks calls “multi-tenancy” environments.
Visual Performance Manager is built using the Visual Uptime technology Fluke Networks acquired from Visual Networks in 2006. Visual Performance Manager accepts input from what Fluke claims is a broader range of data sources than other management vendors. These data sources include hardware data collectors, software agents, network and data center infrastructure, and portable data gathering products. The data sources can employ active or passive data gathering methods.
Fluke Networks sells three of its own data collection products. The first is its Application Performance Appliance, a high speed device that gathers layer 4 performance data through a spanning port or tap located in one or more data centers. The second is the Analysis Service Element, is also a high speed performance data gathering appliance, but is different because it sits in-line and gathers data at layers 2 and 3. The last product, Network Flow Appliance, gathers IP packet flow data from network devices like routers and application delivery devices such as those from Riverbed and Blue Coat.
Data is uploaded into an analysis and reporting engine that Fluke says “bridges the gap” between microscopic views from protocol analyzers and macroscopic views from traditional statistical reporting tools to provide “enterprise-wide” views of both application flows and IT infrastructure “silos”. Visual Performance Manager provides data correlation capabilities and allows users drill into the data from high level views to identify application performance problems and their causes.
Fluke Networks tells us they currently have more than 250 Visual Performance Manager installations worldwide, and they are in the process of moving 2000 or so Visual Uptime customers to Visual Performance Manager.
If you have deployed the Visual Performance Manager or it predecessor Visual Uptime, tell us what you think. Do they live up to your expectations? What were your impressions? A simple “I like it”, “I have mixed feelings”, or “I hate it” response is fine–but if you have insight to share with the community, then talk all you want. You can post a reply to this blog using your name or anonymously.
