ControlTower architecture brings ‘efficient, comprehensive’ visibility

The ControlTower architecture builds on the capabilities of the award-winning Ixia Anue Net Tool Optimizer® (NTO) network monitoring switches, which aggregate, filter, load balance and de-duplicate network traffic to intelligently connect data center and cloud provider networks with monitoring tools. This enables network operators to meet rapidly increasing bandwidth demands while retaining critical, packet-level visibility into application performance and security at line rate, all managed via a simple yet powerful central interface.

The ControlTower architecture extends the boundaries of the visible network beyond a single data center with a highly scalable approach that improves monitoring of distributed environments by providing:

. Maximum efficiency: Powered by the Anue NTO's industry-leading custom dynamic data traffic filtering capabilities, network monitoring switches filter traffic upon ingress. This reduces traffic on the interconnect links and the potential for dropped packets relative to lesser solutions, which blindly broadcast all traffic to all connected monitoring switches.

. Simple usability and control: Ixia's class-leading user interface presents the entire distributed visibility environment as a single switch, allowing administrators to add new monitored network segments with no added management complexity or overhead - making management of a large number of network segments just as easy as managing one. Additionally, administrative controls allow administrators to subdivide access control across multiple work groups at a granular level.

. Flexible deployment options: Using Ixia's ControlTower architecture, network monitoring switches may be easily deployed in a single high-density stack, distributed across the top of multiple racks in a data center or distributed to multiple buildings in a campus environment. This provides tremendous flexibility in placement of monitored segments and network tools.

"As businesses continue to expand both their use of and reliance on secure, high-performing IT infrastructures, they are moving toward modular approaches that can include both internal and external cloud resources," said Jim Frey, Vice President of Research for Network Management at Enterprise Management Associates. "Servers, storage and networking components are more often virtualized and can be activated as needed, and so monitoring strategies need to be flexible and scalable to keep pace. Distributed packet monitoring architectures such as Ixia's ControlTower are critical for maintaining visibility in the face of dynamic resource provisioning and agile, hybrid environments."

"In highly distributed environments, visibility architecture is a critical component of the infrastructure - security and performance issues often occur deep inside a network, not on its perimeter," said Scott Register, Senior Director of Product Management for Ixia. "As cloud adoption continues to grow and enterprise campus networks increase in size and complexity, administrators still require actionable insights to prevent and address problems no matter where the network segment may be."