I Already Have An Application Performance Monitoring Tool. Why Do I Need IP Fabric?

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools can tell you that something’s wrong, but they can’t tell you why unless the problem is within the application itself. IP Fabric maps your applications to underlying network and cloud infrastructure, so you can see exactly which paths, devices, and security controls impact application performance. This means IP Fabric can help you to answer questions that APM tools can’t, like “what breaks if something in my on-prem or cloud environments changes?”

Can IP Fabric Replace My Application Performance Monitoring Tool?

IP Fabric is meant to complement your Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool, rather than replace it. IP Fabric ingests application context from APM tools, and layers it on top of IP Fabric’s digital twin of on-prem and cloud environments. This way, you get a unified view of network, cloud, and host layers to inform troubleshooting, change management, compliance audits, and more.

How Does IP Fabric Ingest Application Data?

IP Fabric has a supported integration with Illumio, but can integrate seamlessly with other tools (e.g. Guardicore, Dynatrace, Datadog) via open API. IP Fabric also gives you the option to ingest application data manually through CSV files.

Application Infrastructure Mapping

Protect critical applications across on-prem and cloud environments.

Transcript

Transcript: Application Infrastructure Mapping

IP Fabric is the only assurance platform that shows the relationships across network, cloud, and application services. App infrastructure mapping or AIM adds application context to IP fabric’s deterministic network and cloud model, revealing each business service and the infrastructure that supports it.

Flows connect that service context to observed communication. Teams can review source workloads, destinations, ports, and protocols, then calculate the real network path to validate whether traffic can actually get through. Workloads turn IP addresses into meaningful application components. AIM associates virtual machines, containers, or bare metal hosts with the applications they serve, giving network and application teams a shared operating picture. Device context completes the relationship for any application flow. Teams can see the routers, switches, firewalls, and cloud controls in the path, making dependencies and potential change impact immediately visible.

AIM starts with native Illumio integration and a vendor-neutral data model through native connections and structured ingestion. The model can be supplemented with context from platforms such as Guardicore, Dynatrace, DataDog, and similar sources. Teams can define or import application groups and environments, preserving business meanings such as production, staging, and development without rebuilding the network model. Each application is linked to its workloads and interfaces, so ownership, and placement stay connected to current infrastructure evidence as the environment changes.

Flow definitions add source, destination, protocol, and port. IP fabric correlates application identity, workload placement, topology, and enforcement into one evidence-grade model. That visibility supports compliance, resilience, and security, and helps teams plan refreshes and migrations.

AIM extends IP Fabric’s value to application, DevOps, security, compliance, and procurement teams.

How Will A Change Affect Your Applications?

IP Fabric gives your teams and AI agents an application-aware model of cloud and network behavior. Use this model as a trusted data foundation for automating business-critical workflows like change management, security / regulatory compliance validation, troubleshooting, and more.

With IP Fabric’s normalized network insights, even colleagues who aren’t admins can see if their traffic will pass from an app server through [a] service. And they can use it by themselves, without our assistance.

Radovan Vojtek

Network Manager

@ Albert

Read Customer Story

De-Risk Change Management

Map application dependencies to underlying devices, paths, and flows. Help AI agents to understand the impact a network or cloud-level change will have on applications before they make it.

network path between an application mailing system and an HR database

Validate Segmentation Policies

Prove that segmentation intent matches observed behavior at network and host layers. Automatically generate snapshots as timestamped evidence of compliance with leading frameworks like CIS, NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and more.

Unicast lab across host and network layers in IP Fabric network digital twin

Accelerate Troubleshooting & Incident Resolution

Conduct root cause analysis across every application, flow, and workload simultaneously. Automatically embed app-aware insights into ITSM tickets for swift incident resolution.