Virtual Instruments announced its newest VirtualWisdom SAN Performance Probe, the ProbeFC8-HD48.
The new probe is the industry’s first and only 48-port, real‑time 8G line rate monitoring solution for Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs).
It significantly improves the economics associated with dedicated performance monitoring of SAN-based systems, enabling organizations to extend monitoring capabilities deeper into their IT infrastructure.
The ProbeFC8-HD48 delivers six times the density of the original ProbeFC8 and lowers the cost per monitored link by 50 percent. It also uses 75 percent less rackspace and consumes 75 percent less power for the same monitoring footprint.
Traditionally, organizations have deployed dedicated monitoring solutions only against tier-1 revenue-generating or customer-facing applications. With the improved cost/benefit ratio of the ProbeFC8-HD48, organizations can now affordably monitor a broader application portfolio and drive greater performance optimization across more of the IT infrastructure.
Today’s IT environments, which leverage virtualization and cloud computing technologies, are designed for the utmost flexibility and require a solution that provides real‑time visibility into the performance of the underlying infrastructure. Statistical sampling or polling technologies, which gather incomplete data, are no longer sufficient. Instrumenting the physical SAN and seeing the traffic at the protocol level allows organizations to monitor every exchange and measure the impact of the SAN on application response times. This insight enables organizations to better align application requirements with performance capabilities, utilization levels and cost requirements to deliver on the value that is the promise of virtualization and cloud computing.
“We’ve listened to feedback from our customers and only two years after we introduced the first of the ProbeFC8 family of devices we’ve made significant strides in improving the density and economics of the solution,” said Barry Cooks, VP of Engineering, Virtual Instruments. “The addition of the ProbeFC8-HD48 rounds out the portfolio of SAN Performance Probes and expands the scope and scale of the IT environments that we can address.”
The SAN Performance Probe family of devices delivers the real‑time visibility that customers need to optimize the performance of their IT infrastructure. The ProbeFC8-HD48 is designed for large scale deployments with high port density storage arrays and for high-growth storage environments. The ProbeFC8-HD, which was introduced last year and monitors up to 16 Fibre Channel links per unit, is built for mid-scale, distributed deployments with mid-tier storage arrays. The ProbeFC8, which monitors up to 8 Fibre Channel links per unit, is ideal for small, entry-level deployments.
The ProbeFC8-HD48 is expected to be generally available by the end of the year.
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