Network management solutions provider Riverbed Technology introduced new capabilities to its Cascade application-aware network performance management (NPM) solution, which delivers visibility into virtualized data centres and those using load-balancing application delivery controllers (ADCs).

Riverbed said that virtualization and load balancing have fundamentally transformed the data centre. While these technologies provide amazing benefits, they also create real visibility challenges.

Cascade 9.5 extends end-to-end service performance monitoring and troubleshooting, from the remote local area network (LAN), across the wide area network (WAN) and now deeper into the data centre.

“For end-to-end performance, IT operations need visibility into all application and network traffic across all IT environments i.e. physical and virtual, from the user to the deepest depths of the data centre. Cascade provides enterprise customers a unique, cost-effective, and easy-to-use solution for monitoring and troubleshooting today’s complex IT environment and the critical applications that run over it,” said Dimitri Vlachos, Senior Director of Marketing and Product Management, Cascade Business Unit at Riverbed.

Cascade Profiler is an NPM offering to provide a wizard-based configuration process for service monitoring across ADCs and Virtual Cascade Shark offers continuous packet capture and performance analysis in virtual environments.

Cascade 9.5 automates the discovery and monitoring of load balanced applications, and tightens the integration between Cascade Shark and Cascade Profiler by bringing support for voice over IP (VoIP) protocols and quality metrics into Cascade Profiler.

In addition, Cascade Pilot simplifies the task of correlating and analyzing related traffic streams captured from multiple locations or sources to identify where on the network performance issues are occurring, the company said.