How to Monitor Virtual Network Environments
Eliminating virtual blind spots that lead to outages and risks
Monitoring virtual environments requires eliminating blind spots created between virtual machines (VMs) in virtual data centers. Moving network services to the cloud creates agility, but at the same time, it undermines observability and the IT department’s power to act. Blind spots are created when traffic travels from “east to west” between VMs without reaching the top of the rack where packets usually get tapped. This lack of visibility limits the value of performance and security monitoring tools that rely on accurate and complete information. Virtual blind spots also cause IT and SecOps teams to lose access to traffic needed to demonstrate compliance during regulatory audits. Public cloud offerings may include traffic mirroring, which means relying on public services to police themselves. Processing synthetic copies of packets also may overwhelm monitoring tools and bandwidth.
Monitoring virtual environments requires extending visibility to the cloud to eliminate blind spots and avoid outages and liability, the same way it is implemented in the physical world. Virtual visibility enables ops teams to capture and use real packets instead of relying on logs and provider telemetry for audits and analysis. Start by tapping east-west data streams to bridge gaps in virtual observability. Virtual taps copy and send data to physical or virtual packet brokers to filter and forward traffic to monitoring tools for analysis. Pre-processing traffic at the visibility layer optimizes the use of tools, bandwidth, and time—and enables monitoring infrastructures to scale on demand.
Auto-scaling visibility for virtual environments
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CloudLens, Enterprise Edition — SUB-CL-ENT
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