Remember what it was like to drive without a GPS? Sure, it’s possible, but a good GPS takes it to a whole new level. Need gas? A Denny’s Grand Slam? A detour around traffic? You’ve got it! And when the kids start asking “how much longer” you have a precise answer! Old-school server metrics are like the gauges in your car: They show what’s happening now and can be useful to the driver, but a lot of questions are left un-answered. This is where application performance monitoring comes in: Rather than just checking server stats, APM gives credible, actionable, and user-focused answers about the state of your systems.
SolarWinds: Live From Tech Field Day San Jose

After fighting yet more networking gremlins, Tech Field Day resumed at The Hoffman Agency wit a presentation by SolarWinds. We had come to expect quite a lot from this company after their fine presentation at Net Field Day in September, and the delegates were not disappointed. SolarWinds discussed their various management products, as well as their approach to high availability and database design.
Announcing Tech Field Day 4: This Week in San Jose!
A VMware Hypervisor For Networkers?
As my friend Stu Miniman pointed out, a recent VMware video suggests the company is about to jump into networking in a big way. Dubbed “vFabric,” this new offering would be a generic hypervisor for virtual network devices, from load balancers to security appliances, and would presumably be integrated with the existing vNetwork Distributed Switch functionality. This appears to be more than just a generic version of what Cisco already uses for their Nexus 1000V!
Runt Packet – SolarWinds Orion NPMv10 With Head Geek Josh Stephens
SolarWinds Orion fanboy Ethan talks to the Head Geek at SolarWinds, Josh Stephens. The discussion is around Orion Network Performance Monitor v.10. If you haven’t checked out Orion in a few years, it’s all grown up now. Ethan’s implementing Orion NPM and loving it, and had a nice chat with Josh about the core Orion features.