VI Monitors FC Traffic

The TAP device is a new appliance designed by Virtual Instruments and optimized for the NetWisdom Enterprise storage-area-network monitoring solution, which provides the application-to-SAN transaction performance data storage administrators need to manage their Fibre Channel switched networks.

Enterprise customers like Barclays Card Services, Kaiser Permanente and McKesson Corp., increasingly house their business-critical data in the SAN, which makes greater SAN visibility, performance and reliability a requirement. Leveraging NetWisdom Enterprise with the new TAP device gives companies a cost-effective way to see – in real time – the data flowing between their SANs and business applications, which helps them optimize infrastructure utilization and detect costly problems before they occur.

As an integral part of Virtual Instrument’s NetWisdom Enterprise solution, the TAP device:

Unlike Mirror or SPAN ports, TAP devices show complete visibility of network traffic and mirror the data flowing between two network points.

Availability and Pricing: The TAP device is currently available as a core component or a standalone monitoring appliance. A single TAP device offers four ports and has an optional, 1U rack-mountable chassis that supports up to 16 ports. Pricing starts at $300 per port for a TAP device.

Quotes

Mark Urdahl, Virtual Instruments’ Chief Executive Officer: “IT administrators can find themselves in serious and expensive situations when the storage network experiences a problem or down time with limited visibility into the root-cause of the problem. Having Virtual Instruments’ TAP device is like having a window into your SAN traffic. It provides unprecedented access to SAN transactions so that performance and troubleshooting issues can be proactively identified and resolved, allowing our customers to realize tremendous cost savings.”

Arun Taneja, Founder, Taneja Group: “Tapping the SAN is a best practice that solves a problem I hear about frequently: the inability to get data off of the fabric, and as a result, inability to quickly resolve network issues in complex and virtualized environments. The unique value of the Virtual Instruments TAP device is the quality and depth of data it collects to help IT administrators manage their systems and make the services delivery cloud transparent. The analytical engines work across multi-vendor platforms without disrupting IT operations or network traffic. The result is increased visibility, a better managed SAN and improved ROI.”

Virtual Instruments