Network Performance Monitor (NPM) in Operations Management Suite, a component of Microsoft Azure, monitors network performance between office sites, data centers, clouds and applications in near real-time. It helps a network administrator locate and troubleshoot bottlenecks like network delay, data loss and availability of any network link across on-premises networks, Microsoft Azure VNets, Amazon Web Services VPCs, hybrid networks, VPNs or even public internet links.
Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is network monitoring from the Operations Management Suite, that monitors networks. NPM monitors the availability of connectivity and quality of connectivity between multiple locations within and across campuses, private and public clouds. It uses synthetic transactions to test for reachability and can be used on any IP network irrespective of the make and model of network routers or switches deployed.
It does not require any access to network devices. Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) or OMS extension (valid only for Virtual machines hosted in Azure) is to be installed on the servers in the Subnetworks that are to be monitored.
A video-based demo of NPM is available online.
NPM uses synthetic transactions to test for reachability and calculate network performance metrics across the network. Tests are performed using either TCP or ICMP and users have the option of choosing between these protocols. Users must evaluate their environments and weigh the pros and cons of the protocols. The following is a summary of the differences.
NPM Solution became generally available (GA).[1] The launch was picked up by eWeek[2]
NPM solution was announced in the Public Preview
Windows 7 SP1 or later
Network Performance Monitor is available in the following Azure regions:
TCP handshakes every 5 seconds, data sent every 3 minutes[3]