Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse Review

Appliance passively monitors network traffic. Ability to group transactions, great charts and correlation capabilities. Excellent for strategic metrics and as a troubleshooting/analysis tool. Thresholds and trap generation. Excellent protocol analytics out-of-the-box. Traffic capture warehouse. Good integration with AppTransaction Xpert (transaction analysis like wireshark) and Wireshark. Publishes reports. Some data accessible though API - can be integrated with existing management systems.

I began using ARX in 2008. I use it frequently as an APM analytic tool.

I've found these appliances to be very stable

Although the Director provides some centralized management and RPM Dashboards provides some degree of integration, each appliance stands alone in collection and analytical ability. The appliances come in rather large sizes, but if you have a large enterprise and you're looking to bring data feeds in from several locations, it will likely have to be served on several appliances.