InstrumentiX, the performance monitoring and analytics solutions provider, and FMADIO, the packet capture appliance vendor, have together released a new 100G capture and analytics platform, the x-100.
The x-100 was developed in response to the exponential increase in trading-related data volumes in recent years, which has driven a demand for high-performance capture and analytics to tackle the throughput across 100Gbps network and infrastructure deployments. The product is designed to provide insight into the link between technology efficiency and trading performance, crucial in the drive to optimise execution outcomes and customer experience.
“Whilst critical, it’s not just about packet capture – the data itself needs to be available and actionable immediately,” says Steve Hicks, InstrumentiX Founder and Chief Technology Officer. “Exchanges, investment banks, market makers and HFT shops all have huge amounts of traffic that needs to be captured, but they also want to process that traffic in real-time. They need access to performance metrics, fault diagnosis and analytics, with full confidence in that data, and need to be able to act on it without delay.”
Central to the x-100 is InstrumentiX’s xMetrics flow monitoring engine, which facilitates data enrichment and transformation by allowing the user to interact directly with the data it is creating. This feature not only allows external data to be used in enrichment, but also allows for the introduction of user-defined functions into the instrumentation path that can be used to transform – in real time – any and all data.
“xMetrics is the only instrumentation platform that has complete modularity, and was built from the get-go to be implemented in the same distributed manner as the systems it monitors,” states Hicks. “That means that we can in effect deliver instrumentation as middleware. Also, it’s the only instrumentation platform that’s programmable, meaning that the client can introduce user-defined functions into the instrumentation path, allowing for easy customisation. With FMADIO underpinning that in terms of lossless capture, we believe that with the x-100, we’ve got a market leading solution that is more flexible, more open and more cost-effective than any other in the market today.”
Highlights of the x-100 include: FPGA-backed sustained capture rates of 100Gbps and burst capture rates of 200Gbps; 3.2ns-resolution hardware timestamping; lossless capture of 148.88 million packets a second; monitoring of all execution, market data, infrastructure and network performance through a single pane; correlation & root cause analysis; and customisable multi-factor adaptive alerting.
“Instrumentation is crucial in providing constant verifiable execution efficiency, safeguarding customer experience and driving operational improvement,” says Hicks. “The integration of these two market-leading solutions into a single platform offers both the most cost-conscious and the most feature-demanding clients a solution unmatched by any competing vendor.”
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