Germany-based network monitoring outfit, Paessler this week at Cisco (News - Alert) Live was promoting its new continuous rollout model.
Thomas Timmerman, vice president of business development in North America for Paessler, explains that in the past the company introduced just one software release each year. But when you introduce a bunch of new functionality all at once, he adds, it’s hard to ensure software stability. So now, with the continuous rollout model, Paessler introduces updates to its software much more frequently; just how frequently customers get those updates, however, is up to them, he says.
Paessler customers can opt to be part of what is known as the canary channel. That means, like canaries in a coal mine, they are invited to be among the first to test a new release (in their non-critical applications, of course) and urged to assist Paessler in identifying issues with the release. The preview channel, meanwhile, gets a more mature but still unofficial release of the software. And the official release group gets releases once they’re “very very stable,” says Timmerman, but those are still released much more frequently (every few weeks or months these days) than in the past.
The company’s product is called the PRTG Network Monitor.
“PRTG is the perfect all-over monitoring solution for every network,” Timmerman says. “It gives you a real-time view of what’s going on in your network. It’s very fast and in an easy-to-use way.”
PRTG version 12 includes a "Configuration Guru," new sensor types and interactive geo-maps. Version 12's new sensor types monitor VMware host's health status, SharePoint processes, IIS Web services and VPN-connections. SIP options ping on a SIP server and Google (News - Alert) Analytics values, Ping times measured via a remote system using WMI. The latest version also includes a sensor for monitoring XEN host servers.
Edited by Brooke Neuman