I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside two completed VeloCloud deployments over the past 6 months. This blog covers what I’ve learned about the setup and prerequisites within VMware’s VeloCloud interface and Plixer’s Scrutinizer interface for metadata/IPFIX analysis via flow collection. Once setup is complete, I will highlight how Plixer’s Scrutinizer platform uses that data to demystify the process of bandwidth allocation for carrier and edge selection.
Read moreCategory: Network Operations
Network capacity planning fundamentals
Are we properly utilizing these expensive WAN links? That is probably a question you have asked yourself on more than one occasion when you get a bill from your provider. While MPLS/Broadband connectivity both have pros and cons, wouldn’t it be great if you had a tool to see if they were properly being utilized or if load is increasing over time? How about rather than just seeing in/out bits/s, you could determine what application is consuming the link? Stay tuned and see how it works!
Securing third-party VPN access
We all know that VPN monitoring is something every network and security engineer should be familiar with, but with the recent uptick of changes in companies work-from-home policies, IT departments are struggling to scale up to the VPN demands. Let’s be 100% honest about this: most networks weren’t designed to handle the demand we are seeing right now.
How to monitor VPN traffic
More and more people are working from home. Now, organizations need a way to understand the role a remote workforce plays in their network performance and security posture. Fortunately, with network traffic metadata, organizations can easily monitor VPN traffic, whether it’s through a split tunnel or no-split tunnel.
Read moreWhere should I enable flow data?
The big boss had a conference call over the weekend. She sent a message to your boss’s boss, which trickled downhill, and eventually made its way to you in the form of a text message.
Read moreCan your network survive the coronavirus lockdown?
Lately, I have seen an increase in support calls regarding the increase in bandwidth consumption and the degradation of application performance seen when employees started working from home because of the coronavirus outbreak.
I installed Scrutinizer 100 times and here’s what I learned
As a Presales Engineer, I spend a good portion of my time helping with Scrutinizer installs and helping troubleshoot unique use cases for end users. In my 7 years of doing this, I’ve noticed a lot of commonality between installs even in disparate environments. I hope to add more to this list as time goes on and trends in the industry evolve further.
Read moreWhich NetFlow collection process is better: duplicated or deduplicated NetFlow?
Questions regarding deduplicated NetFlow often come up when beginning to research NetFlow solutions. This blog will address some of the reasons why deduplication might not be the best way to go.
Read moreIPFIX reporting with F5 Big-IP (part 1)
Modern networks are designed to provide fast and reliable access to the applications that make us productive. Maybe it’s the inventory system used to keep procurement and warehousing in sync, or maybe it’s a system that queues and processes financial transactions. In any case, often these business-critical apps will need to be scaled horizontally to allow for additional concurrent capacity. Orchestrating access to multiple nodes serving the same app can be a technical challenge.
Read moreFlow protocols in real-world environments
Over the years, libraries have been filled on the topic of flow protocols—specifically, how they work and their general accuracy.
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