Endace Preps Virtual Network Probes

Network monitoring technology vendor Endace is readying a virtualized version of its Endace Probe monitoring platform, for users to run multiple virtual machines on one appliance, allowing firms to scale out the number of probes they use while maintaining a centralized management system.

The vendor is currently beta testing the new platform with existing clients, including several unnamed New York-based investment banks, and aims to make it generally available by the end of July, says Endace marketing director Tim Nichols.

Interest has primarily come from larger clients with their own monitoring applications-including for monitoring the latency of market data feeds or order entry-running on the Endace Probe appliance, who can now deploy hundreds of probes with virtual machines running applications across global networks, while leveraging Endace's management layer to centrally monitor how the probes perform and to manage the applications on the virtual machines, Nichols says.

The managed probes deliver the system's packet capture functionality for monitoring and recording network activity, which enables firms to extract specific data packets and use them in other applications. For example, algorithmic traders can filter a trading day's network traffic and forward the data to modeling applications to plan the following day's trading strategies. The new probes also include the Cace Pilot network visualization tool from Cace Technologies, which alerts users to unusual network events like microbursts, and provides charts that show network activity when the microburst occurred.

The new release enables clients to make the captured data packets available to multiple applications running in virtual machines at the same time against a common dataset, Nichols says. "By running their applications on the same dataset, many of the issues organizations face around microbursts or delays become much easier to resolve," he adds.