In the world of application delivery and performance management, it’s not easy on the applications or networking operations side to troubleshoot and resolve end-to-end issues. I‘m sure you have heard of Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR); frequently used for measuring how long it takes to resolve a particular problem from the time a trouble ticket is open to when the problem is resolved (i.e. when the ticket is closed). Have you heard of Mean Time To Innocence (MTTI), which is basically the metric for how long it takes to prove the issue wasn’t your responsibility?
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Dynatrace’s PERFORM Global Conference. At this conference, Mike Hicks, who is the senior product line manager for Dynatrace’s DC RUM Application Performance Management (APM) product line spoke about his conversation with a customer regarding MTTI. When you are troubleshooting end-to-end application performance issues, the sooner you can isolate if it is a client (end user) related issue, networking issue, or back-end issue (example: database system) the more effectively you can shorten your MTTR. So if you are an application engineer (or network operations engineer) proving your innocence is the key to getting the right team within the enterprise IT group to look at the issue. If you are not able to isolate the issue, the problem drags on, and finger pointing starts between the different teams (application, networking, database, etc). Hence MTTI becomes a critical factor in reducing your MTTR.
Mike presented how to deploy Dynatrace’s DC-RUM product line with EndaceProbe™ Network Recorders to improve your chances of cutting down MTTI and MTTR. Specifically, how to troubleshoot and isolate networking issues by leveraging EndaceProbe capabilities. EndaceProbes provide reliable network history for going back in time (i.e. network forensics) when troubleshooting network related issues. Look for some exciting product announcements coming soon on this from Dynatrace and Endace.
Dynatrace is a recognized and established Application Performance Management (APM) solutions vendor and Endace is an established Network Recording solutions vendor. The combined solution provides a best-of-breed Application Aware Network Performance Monitoring (AA-NPM) solution that doesn’t lock customers into a single vendor/run-of-the-mill solution. We (the Endace team) had a great time at the Dynatrace conference connecting with end users as well as the Dynatrace team. It was a great start to our relationship and an exciting journey lies ahead!