Category: Stories from the IT Trenches
Storage Performance Monitoring and the Need for Holistic Visibility
The Service Level Agreement is always the first casualty in the war to assign blame. Most IT organizations monitor their applications and infrastructure in an extremely disjointed manner, with each specialist team relying on tools that provide visibility into a specific technology silo: network tools for the network engineers, database profilers for the DBAs, agent-based [...]
Performance Metric of the Month: HTTP Payload Details
For our November performance metric of the month, we’re looking at HTTP payloads. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a tremendously important technology layer that supports many critical services. As the basis for web applications and services, HTTP traffic carries a rich trove of information that is important for monitoring application performance, gaining insight into business [...]
Case Study: DevOps Collaboration with Application Performance Management (APM)
Traditionally, performance-monitoring tools have been relegated to silos—DBAs have their database profilers, developers and Q&A have their agent-based application instrumentation, and network guys have their packet sniffers and NetFlow analyzers. When an application performance problem arises, development, application support, network, database, virtualization, and storage teams each refer to their own specialist tools. This traditional approach [...]
Microsoft’s 1024-Bit RSA Key-Size Requirement and Other IT Burdens
This post is written by Cal Jewell, a Senior Technical Trainer at ExtraHop. In June, Microsoft announced that it would release an update blocking the use of RSA keys using less than 1024-bit encryption. While the update has been available for testing, the October 9 “Patch Tuesday” will make the update widely available via Windows [...]
ExtraHop v3.7 – APM Improvements for Ease of Use and Visualization
We’ve just released version 3.7 of the ExtraHop system, including important new application performance monitoring functionality that makes IT operations more agile and efficient. Our aim with this release is to enable IT organizations to better visualize their data, identify issues even faster and resolve them proactively, facilitate collaboration among various IT disciplines, and allocate [...]
TCP: Where the Network Meets the Application, Part 2
This post is written by Eric Thomas, Principal Solutions Architect at ExtraHop Networks. In Part 1 of this two-part series, we imagined the perfect framework for no-impact monitoring of an application stack and found it was right in front of us all along in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Today, we delve into the particulars [...]
Case Study: When Application Performance Is About Efficiency, Not Just Speed
At ExtraHop, we get excited about how our customers are using our network-based application performance management (APM) solution to do some really astonishing things. ExtraHop customers run some of the largest, most complex application environments out there—and they do it better than most. Some people might think that companies with world-class IT Operations don’t need [...]
Major Nordic Retail Group Axstores Chooses ExtraHop to Ensure Smooth Application Migration
[This post is written by Owen Cole, EMEA Vice President at ExtraHop Networks.] For companies that operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, keeping critical business systems running is non-negotiable. Ecommerce is an obvious example of a business-critical application, but there are others: trading systems for financial services firms, electronic medical records systems for hospitals, [...]
Why Healthcare IT Teams Need Agentless Application Performance Monitoring
Summary: ExtraHop offers a great application performance management solution for the healthcare industry that helps healthcare IT teams efficiently support initiatives such as mobile applications, electronic health records (EHR), and policy compliance. This week we’re at the HIMSS12 Conference in Las Vegas, booth #5238. Application performance is incredibly important for nearly every industry, but the [...]
“It’s the Network’s Fault”: Avoiding the IT Blame Game with Network-Based Application Performance Management
Blame the network? Sure, but what about cosmic rays? Play the IT Blame Game at www.itblame.com. “I think the greatest measure of a good network engineer is to have the ability to demonstrate and prove to non-networking teams the reasons why the network is not to blame (and to take the flak when it is),” [...]