Specifications

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Improved Operational Efficiency and Scale
Our vPB and vTAP eliminate typical long deployment
cycles associated with hardware through automated scale
orchestration and simplified provisioning. They allow
dynamic modification of flow-definitions and traffic
optimization functions in the network visibility
infrastructure when changes occur in the production
network (such as the addition or removal of VMs,
variations in traffic volume, and new flow patterns). This
capability improves monitoring productivity and offers
greater network agility. Our vPB is designed to also mask
patterns in specific packets to protect sensitive
information from unauthorized usage.
Customers typically deploy one or more vTAPs on a host,
switch, or subnet to monitor traffic to and from application
VMs. (see Figure 1) vTAPs can directly interact with
special-purpose probes as well as export IPFIX metadata
(to gain insights into network traffic) to analytical tools.
Customers can deploy a vPB to aggregate traffic from a
large number of vTAPs and implement filtering actions on
aggregated traffic and extract metadata information.
When traffic flows between VMs (see Figure 1) the vTAP
instances process tapped traffic for monitoring purposes
and forward configured flows or packets using tunnels or
VLANs to the vPB. The vTAP also exports IPFIX metadata
to the IPFIX collector for the desired traffic flow. The vPB
terminates the tunnels from the vTAPs, aggregates the
forwarded traffic and routes selected flows or packets to
the probes. The vPB also exports IPFIX metadata to the
IPFIX collector.
Session and Packet Mode
The vTAP and vPB can be configured to run in two
different modes that can be specified as part of the
Interface Configuration.
Session mode:
The session mode identifies each unique traffic flow in the
network and maintains this information in its memory
during the lifecycle of each flow session. This mode
enables the vPB and vTAP to apply policies, such as
filtering, header stripping, and packet slicing on a per-flow
session basis based on advanced criteria, such as signature
or pattern matching in any packet payload.
It enables the following:
- Offloads flow session management from
special-purpose probes to vTAP/ vPB
- Samples out know n application flow sessions using
vTAP/ vPB
- Forwards application flows based on custom-pattern
and signature identification for further analysis
- Extracts and generates metadata for desired flows ?
all flows, specific flows, sampled-out flows, etc.
Packet Mode:
The packet mode configures the vTAP and vPB to apply
policies on a per-packet basis. This is useful in
deployments where flow session awareness is not required.
This mode enables the vPB and vTAP to apply policies,
such as filtering, header stripping, and packet slicing at
per-packet granularity based on advanced criteria, such as
signature or pattern matching in any packet payload. It
enables the following:
- Offloads packet-level policy management from
special-purpose probes to the vTAP/ vPB
- Forwards and drops packets based on custom-pattern
and signature identification for further analysis
Tunnel Management
The vTAP and the vPB can initiate and terminate tunnels.
They support these tunnel initiation types:
- NVGRE
- VxLAN
They supported these tunnel termination types:
- GRE
- ERSPAN Type II
- VxLAN
- IPIP
Figure 1: Sample traffic flow between VMs