Multi-Tenant Traffic Visibility for OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure

At the OpenStack Summit in Austin this week, we will be demonstrating integrations with our partners’ products RSA Security Analytics and Viavi xSIGHT Virtualized Assurance solutions showing how we work together in order to provide pervasive traffic visibility for OpenStack Private Cloud and NFV deployments.

While many large enterprises and carriers have deployed OpenStack environments, traffic analysis for these multi-tenant workloads has proven challenging due to a lack of a traditional monitoring capability. Whether it’s Service Providers deploying Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) or large enterprises deploying IaaS capabilities, performance monitoring and security are paramount in being able to optimize availability and identify security risks. The foundation to all this is visibility. Together, the solutions we are demonstrating show the following is possible for OpenStack deployments:

By leveraging Gigamon’s GigaVUE-VM, RSA Security Analytics can provide extended visibility, threat detection and response capabilities across both physical environments and into cloud-based environments using OpenStack. The coupling of both solutions allows customers to share threat analysis and detection across the enterprise, removing blind spots, as they extend into the cloud without requiring investments in additional security monitoring tools.

Figure 1- RSA SA – Gigamon solution for tenant visibility

With Viavi’s xSIGHT Virtualized Assurance solutions and GigaVUE-VM, we’re showing Mobile Service Providers how they can benefit from visibility-enabled performance management and customer experience assurance across their whole network. The combined solution offers SLA monitoring and compliance for applications that have migrated onto OpenStack as well as analysis and troubleshooting of network and subscriber traffic for mobile operators. Again, this clearly shows the operational and financial benefits of leverage existing monitoring tools and policies by extending their visibility into the OpenStack environment. You can read more about the Viavi solution here: http://blog.viavisolutions.com/2016/04/21/network-visibility-in-an-nfv-world/ 

Figure 2. Viavi xSIGHT – Gigamon solution architecture.

Gigamon is the first and only company to offer a traffic visibility solution for OpenStack cloud environments. By working with RSA and Viavi, market leaders in security monitoring and performance management, respectively, to ingest and analyze OpenStack traffic, we’re able to accelerate adoption and expansion of OpenStack deployments by removing some of the most prevalent concerns about how to operationalize these installations.

OpenStack cloud computing represents a collaboration of more than 500 organizations, from cloud service providers to network equipment vendors, and the technology has the potential for incredible innovation. By extending our Visibility Fabric to OpenStack environments we can empower organizations to embrace this new ‘open’ cloud platform while, with our partners,  ensuring that the new infrastructure, applications and virtualized network functions can be monitored and optimized.

If you’re going to be in Austin for the OpenStack Summit, please come by our booth C28 and see the solutions in action for yourself.