How to Move Beyond "Mean-Time-to-Innocence"

Click on the image to see a larger version of the MTTI decision tree. ExtraHop helps to abolish MTTI with correlated, cross-tier visibility.

You may have heard of the tongue-in-cheek term mean-time-to-innocence (MTTI), or the time it takes to prove that the network, virtualization, database, storage, or the application is not to blame for an application performance issue. One of the primary reasons why IT organizations choose the ExtraHop platform is to abolish MTTI.

If Everything's Green, Why Is the Application Still Slow?

The group first accused either finds the issue (not typical) or reports that their silo-specific toolset shows clean and green (MTTI), and then it's the next group's turn to prove their innocence. This process continues as each group uses their own set of tools and data sources. Adding pressure to the situation are constant demands from business stakeholders for status updates and an ETA on resolution.

Packets Don't Lie, But You Have to Make Them Talk

the truth is on the wire

An Objective Source of Truth: Real-Time Wire Data

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Real-World Story of Network Team vs. Application Team

Over the next 18 months, each team used their own set of tools to try to uncover what actually was causing the performance hit with the new equipment. The network team was sure it was not the load balancers, but the application team would not allow the new ones to be installed until the root cause was uncovered. As the standoff continued, the old load balancers were approaching end-of-life, and one of them actually failed altogether, creating a dangerous single point of failure.

The organization contacted ExtraHop to see if we could assist. Within an hour of analyzing the traffic and with zero custom configuration, ExtraHop was able to identify the problem. A flaw in an SQL query statement that did not affect the old load balancers was exposed with the new load balancers. Armed with this information off the wire, the application team made a simple code change that sped up the application on the new load balancers so that it performed better than it ever had with the old equipment.

ExtraHop provides real-time IT insights for all IT groups so that they can bypass the MTTI exercise. DBAs, systems engineers, network architects, InfoSec analysts, application developers—they can all benefit from a view into wire data, all L2-L7 communications between systems. The truth is on the wire, and ExtraHop helps IT teams tap into it. Check it out for yourself with the free, interactive ExtraHop demo.