IBM SDN VE & VSS Monitoring NPB Deliver Converged Monitoring Fabric for SDN

It's an exciting time for the Software Defined Network (SDN) world as IBM unveils the new unified controller, an OpenDayLight technology, at the OpenDaylight Summit this week in Santa Clara. In the press release, IBM claims that its Software Defined Network Virtual Environments (SDN VE), "which consists of the (new) unified controller, virtual switches for creating overlays, gateways to non-SDN environments and open interfaces for application integration," will not only integrate SDN into private and public cloud infrastructure, but also unify and simplify control of the converged nature of today's hybrid networks. (Read IBM press release.)

What's more exhilarating is the joint solution between IBM and VSS Monitoring, i.e. SDN VE and Network Packet Broker (NPB). In addition to traditional network, this combination delivers a converged monitoring fabric for virtual hosts as well as traffic traversing through OpenFlow switches.

What does that mean?
It means SDN-based OpenFlow traffic can now be aggregated to monitoring and security tools through NPB with advanced packet optimization services such as slicing, de-duplication, port & time stamping, fragment re-assembly, encapsulation filtering and load balancing, for both inline and out of band implementation. Such services are not possible within SND-based systems previously.

How does it apply to SDN?
According to IBM & VSS Monitoring's joint solution brief, IBM virtualization solution inserts "an SDN layer that enables TAP aggregation for virtual hosts and OpenFlow networks" while VSS Monitoring vendor-agnostic NPB provides immense flexibility in selecting application and network performance management and security monitoring solutions. Using the combined solution, adding SDN traffic is as easy as programming the OpenFlow switch to act as traffic aggregator. 

Solution Benefits

While one may argue otherwise, immediate inherent benefits of this joint solution are not limited to: 

• Wire-speed and fail-safe monitoring;
• Large scale, cost effective network monitoring for physical  & virtual networks, cloud infrastructure and SNDs; and
• Incremental SDN deployment in a controlled, low risk environment.   

The possibilities are endless with NPBs in SDN-based environments now, specifically in light of recent announcements regarding Big Data Visibility and the soon possible Security-in-Series defense in depth model, which will be announced at RSA 2014 in San Francisco (complimentary passes are still available). 

To learn more: 

1. IBM press release

2. VSS Monitoring and IBM joint solution brief

3. VSS Monitoring Big Data Visibility solution

4. VSS Monitoring at RSA 2014