INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
If the tools cannot keep up with these
speeds they can create bottlenecks,
causing latency in the network if
they are inline. Out of band tools can
miss important data and particularly
attacks hidden amongst the sheer
volume of traffic.
Why are most modern security
and monitoring tools unable to
effectively see inside clouds or
converged infrastructures?
Adrian Rowley is the Technical
Director EMEA for Gigamon
This demand for scalability led to the
development of virtualisation both of
compute and network infrastructure.
Data centres can now scale up and
scale down in seconds rather than
weeks or months based upon physical
infrastructure alone
Why is there a need for data
centre networks to upgrade to
40Gb and higher?
The need for high bandwidth networks
in data centres is due to many factors.
The explosion of hosted applications, the
ever-increasing growth in the number
of consumers connecting to those data
centres to access those applications.
Why is it that many monitoring
analysis tools can’t perform at
these speeds?
The challenge for many tools is that
at speeds of 100Gbps there is only a
6.7 nanosecond inter-packet gap. This
means that a tool of any kind only
has 6.7nS to process all the data in
that packet, analyse it and take any
required action.
What are the consequences of
monitoring analysis tools that
cannot keep up with these speeds?
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INTELLIGENTCIO
There are many challenges relating to
visibility within clouds and converged
infrastuctures. Most public cloud
providers have a shared responsibility
model. They provide security for the
cloud infrastructure but the customer
is responsible for the security of their
own applications and data. Many
organisations’ security and monitoring
tools are physically connected to their
infrastructure. When you move into cloud
or converged infrastructure these physical
connections are no longer possible.
Most of the traffic paths are within the
hypervisor which is invisible to tools in the
physical network. The options are to add
virtual tools to these virtual environments
to deploy a visibility solution that gives
access to the data and can bring it back
to the customers’ physical tools.
What solutions do Gigamon offer to
solve these problems?
The foundation to any solution to
these problems is a Gigamon Visibility
Platform. A Gigamon Visibilty Platform
can help scale the network to the
existing tools. Within a 100 or 40 Gbps
network infrastructure the tools may not
need visibility into every packet. They
may only be interested in a particular
application. The visibility platform
can identify applications and ensure
that only the relevant applications are
“Data centres
can now scale up
and scale down
in seconds rather
than weeks or
months.”
powered by
“Out of band
tools can miss
important data
and particularly
attacks hidden
amongst the sheer
volume of traffic.”
forwarded to the relevant tools, using
patented flow mapping and application
session forwarding technologies.
One solution to the security challenges
in high bandwidth networks is to use the
visibility platform to generate metadata
that can be consumed by SIEM/SEM
solutions. This advanced functionality
offloads these systems and provides key
data directly.
A solution that offers complete insight
into network data in your cloud and
virtualised networks, Gigamon provides
granular visibility into virtual workloads
in VMware-powered SDDC (ESX and
NSX-V) and OpenStack/KVM-powered
multitenant clouds with our GigaVUE®
solutions. Using a public cloud like AWS
requires a new understanding of your
network operational responsibilities.
Foundational services like compute,
storage, networking and infrastructure
security are provided by AWS. It’s up
to you to then manage, secure and
understand your applications and
data. With a visibility platform from
Gigamon, you get a simple, effective
and consistent way to see, manage
and secure data in your public, private,
hybrid or on-premise environments.
Adrian Rowley is the Technical Director
EMEA for Gigamon. He has a keen
interest in network security. While
working for Lucent Technologies,
the company introduced the Lucent
Managed Firewall. Adrian also
worked for leading web security firm
CacheFlow, before joining NetScreen.
He has also worked at Juniper Networks
where he held a number of senior
sales engineering roles. Adrian joined
Gigamon in 2016. n
www.intelligentcio.com