PacketTrap Perspective

Overview:

ScriptLogic Perspective is a comprehensive and affordable network management and application monitoring solution for end user IT departments

Perspective for End Users and IT Departments is now distributed by ScriptLogic, a Quest Software company. ScriptLogic combines a variety of desktop, Exchange, and Windows management solutions with the award winning Perspective network management and monitoring platform to offer your organization a comprehensive infrastructure management suite.

PacketTrap Perspective™ is a comprehensive and affordable network troubleshooting and remediation solution for businesses of all sizes. From its centralized interface, users can solve problems associated with bandwidth, network and application performance and connectivity.

Installed in less than 15 minutes, Perspective auto-discovers devices and provides a complete set of attributes for each device, including hardware (including virtual machines), software applications, and processes and services. Smart policies recommend optimal monitors and data collection settings, eliminating the need for manual configuration. Perspective sends alert notifications once network performance degrades, and can automatically remediate problems. It also provides time series analysis and historical reporting for diagnosing problems faster, all accessed via web-browser or client application.

Highlights

• Install and Configure in Minutes
• User Friendly, Easy-to-Use Interface
• Monitor and Troubleshoot Local and Remote Sites
• Automated Remediation
• Advanced Alerting and Reporting
• Performance Baseline Capabilities
• Includes Netflow (sFlow®, jFlow), VoIP, Virtual, Wireless, Application and Server Monitoring
• Perspective Modules Traffic Analysis Wireless Network Monitoring

Differentiated Deployment:

Perspective is the only solution in its space to provide a differentiated set of capabilities coupled with multiple deployment options:

Local Software Installation - (Data Center or Corporate Office / Remote Office Solution) - Load and go installation of a Perspective server.

SaaS Offering - A highly scalable, redundant infrastructure for Perspective customers who wish to leverage PacketTrap’s data center to host their IT management. Manage from any location even if components of the IT infrastructure are down.

“Cloud Network” Monitoring / Management Solution - Allows customers to host Perspective™ in a third party cloud (via Amazon EC2 and Google Apps Engine) or their internal cloud and monitor their network across data centers and locations.

Agent and Agentless Offering - To provide more granular level inspection of application and network activity, Perspective probes can be installed on individual servers or virtual machines. Perspective can also be installed as an agentless solution and leverage common protocols such as SNMP and WMI to retrieve performance counters and remote data.

Browser or Client Access - Perspective provides users access to network activity via a browser or via a local client install. The browser provides anywhere / anytime access and can provide senior IT management quick access to network operations reports, while the local client can provide a more fluid user experience for IT network administrators.

Features & Benefits:

Monitoring Dashboards
Perspective’s dashboards provide visibility into network performance, fault management and device availability across any size of network. The easily-customized interface provides a summary display of key performance indicators (KPIs) like CPU load, network interface traffic, latency, packet loss and event logs, exposing troubled devices and areas of the network.

Performance Baseline
Automatically analyzes collected data to identify changes in network behavior and establishes a baseline that represents the regular and expected activity of a device and network. The established baseline accurately reflects your organization’s use of the IT infrastructure by taking into account patterns and variations in usage – for example, increased processor utilization on Monday mornings at 9:00am. Performance Baseline continuously logs subsequent activity of a device and compares it to baseline. Once irregular behavior is detected, Perspective produces a qualified alert that contains details to be used as a starting point to help guide the troubleshooting and remediation process.

Smart Policies
Perspective recommends optimal monitors and data collection settings for all devices discovered in the network. Policies encompass all devices, monitors, alerts and scheduled tasks, so any configuration changes occur from one central location. Setting configurations in multiple locations is not necessary.

Multi-Site Networks
Remote Agent, designed expressly for organizations with multi-site networks, provides secure connectivity between IT headquarters and any number of remote sites. The remote agent ensures that all key network performance data is collected and sent to Perspective, providing visibility into the entire IT infrastructure from an end-user’s viewpoint. Taking commands from Perspective, the remote agent can also enforce policies and execute actions.

Real-time and Historical Reports
Reports enable users to quickly generate single or multi device reports that can be printed or emailed in a matter of seconds. Through a simple interface, users can drill down into specific time periods or events – a feature that is particularly useful when troubleshooting issues to identify the root cause of a failure. The solution’s report scheduler lets users email reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to colleagues and executives.

Alerts and Notifications
Perspective enables you to quickly and easily configure powerful alerts to respond to hundreds of different network scenarios, including multiple condition checks. Alerts come with performance baseline capabilities to prevent “false positives” and allow you to correct issues BEFORE users experience any problems. Perspective™ can also automatically escalate network alerts.

Automated Remediation
Perspective™ can be configured to automatically take corrective actions to restore services, including restarting failed applications, restarting windows services, rebooting servers and executing scripts. Minimize downtime as well as your daily tasks by automating remediation steps.

Log File Management
Perspective™ has extensive log monitoring and management capabilities, with the ability to collect, analyze, alert, report, and archive Event Log from Windows hosts, SysLog from distributed UNIX hosts, Routers, Switches, and other SysLog devices, and Application logs from IIS web server, IIS FTP server, and MS SQL server. It helps system administrators to troubleshoot, performance problems on hosts, select applications, and the network.

Router Configuration Backup
Perspective™ has the ability to automatically backup configurations files for your key Cisco routers and switches. Configuration backups can be scheduled to run whenever you would like them to and are stored in the Perspective database for archival history. Through Perspective Policies, you can easily customize the settings for your particular backup needs.

pt360 Tool Suite Integration
Perspective™ integrates seamlessly with the award-winning Network Engineer’s pt360 Tool Suite. The pt360 Tool Suite consolidates dozens of network diagnostic tools into a single, integrated solution. The tool suite includes Ping utilities, Switch Port Mapper, Cisco configuration management, traffic generator, TFTP Server, and many more useful tools. The pt360 Tool Suite is a perfect complement to the extensive real-time monitoring provided by Perspective.

PacketTrap Perspective vs. pt360 Tool Suite:

 

Documentation:

Download the PacketTrap Perspective Datasheet (PDF).