With an application-centric ASM approach processes can be seen, VM changes can be monitored, and detailed performance data is available for every connection so application visibility is maintained, regardless of the latest data center change.

Lack of application visibility in virtualized environments has caused some organizations to throw more resources at performance issues, exacerbating the problem. Take this example: To address application downtime, IT staff at a leading software provider were delivering more capacity and provisioning more VMs to keep things running. However, they soon over-provisioned their users and wasted resources, which negated the benefits of all their previous virtualization efforts.

The solution? By using tools that provide visibility into applications as they reside on virtual servers, support teams followed the service level across the infrastructure, drilling into the server stack to isolate problems and eliminate the need for additional resources, ultimately meeting user requirements while optimizing their resource pool.

Today, ASM tools are capable of providing access to real application data for virtualized environments vs. modeled data. This gives application owners the confidence to virtualize complex applications, knowing they will perform as expected.

These solutions use intelligent data collectors (a service that runs in the operating systems of a few servers in the environment) to passively collect data by monitoring the application request layers. The collector sends detailed statistics on the operating systems by using either Windows Management Instrumentation or ESX Server when connecting to VMware VirtualCenter (recently renamed "vCenter") management APIs. This data helps administrators understand application performance and track its movement in order to detect potential bottlenecks and failures.