Complaints about the lack of visibility into virtual environments are nothing new. It goes without saying that many IT shops will remain reluctant to move more apps onto virtual servers until they have their concerns addressed.

You know what that means… Third parties to the rescue!

One company is using the tried and true method of using software agents to monitor virtual server performance and relay that data to anxious admins. Ixia today launched a line of IxVM testing tools that integrate with VMware to provide autodiscovery of virtualized infrastructures and provide the following:

With Ixia’s new suite of IxVM products, it is now possible to test layer 2/3 virtual network resources and layer 4-7 virtual applications. IxChariot VM, a component of IxVM, uses software endpoints – small software components that run on each virtual machine – that send and receive test traffic, while measuring performance. This makes it possible to source traffic from virtual servers in the same manner as the supported applications. IxExplorer VM uses software endpoints to generate layer 2/3 traffic to test features such as VLAN and QoS.

Oh no! Suddenly the reasons to not virtualize are becoming fewer and fewer…