Microsoft announces the general availability of Network Performance Monitor

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Microsoft yesterday announced the general availability of Network Performance Monitor, a cloud-aware network monitoring solution in Operations Management Suite Insight & Analytics. Network Performance Monitor (NPM) helps you perform near real-time monitoring of network performance parameters (such as packet loss and network latency) and localize network faults. It not only detects network performance issues, but it also localizes the source of the problem to a particular network segment or device to make it easy for you to locate and fix a network performance issue.

Following new features are added to NPM since the public preview release,

  • ICMP based reachability tests: NPM can detect connectivity using Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), in addition to TCP. ICMP-based probing is used in environments with restrictive firewall configurations, that prevent routers, switches, and hosts from responding to TCP based probes.
  • Network State Recorder: Enhancements to NPM, enable the admin to view the state of the network at any point in the past. To investigate a network connectivity incident, that a user may have encountered last Friday night – select the date and time and NPM presents the connectivity, loss, and latency status at that instant.
  • Topology Map: This map presents all the network paths between the endpoints and helps localize a network problem to a particular path. You can drill down into the node links and visualize the hop-by-hop topology of routes.
  • Improved Alert Management: NPM now leverages the alert management capabilities in OMS. Users can now get email-based alerts, in addition to the existing alerts within NPM.
  • Windows desktop support: NPM agents can now run on Windows desktops/client operating systems (Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7), in addition to the previously supported Windows Server OS.
  • Linux support: NPM agents can now test network connectivity from Linux workstations and servers. The following distributions are supported: CentOS Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Debian 8, and SUSE Linux Server 12.
  • Search: Improvements in search, enable quicker drill-down to the specific network and subnets that may be faulty, thereby enabling faster identification and remediation.

More about the topics: Insight & Analytics, microsoft, Network Performance Monitor, NPM, Operations Management Suite