Getting the Most from Your VMware NSX Environment

It is not a stretch to say that the world is fast becoming virtualized. And when it comes to facilitating digital transformation, VMware is a market leader. In fact, VMware software powers much of the world’s most complex digital infrastructures. Analysts estimate that as much as 80 percent of virtualized workloads run on VMware technology.

For many IT organizations tasked with assuring the performance and security of VMware NSX-T software defined network (SDN) infrastructures, the network management tools they have come to rely on with legacy data centers simply won’t meet the more complex needs of a cloud-based environment.

The Need for End-to-End Visibility

To maintain the performance of applications and services across any SDN environment, including VMware NSX, IT needs consistent, end-to-end visibility. This is best achieved with packet-based, application layer-7 visibility into software defined data center (SDDC) environments. The complex service delivery path of SDDC makes pinpointing the root cause of disruptions more challenging. Point tools tend to be inefficient and ineffective for troubleshooting at the application level where critical business services are deployed. And vendor-specific tools are limited to only a part of the environment, which leaves gaps in coverage or potentially conflicting data between the different tools.

IT must quickly resolve issues that arise, first determining if the problem is even an issue in the NSX part of the environment. This challenge is further compounded by the complexity of enterprise multicloud strategies and the wide variety of network, application, infrastructure, and security issues that can impact services across VMware ESX, NSX, and SD-WAN deployments alongside multicloud and legacy data center environments.

Bridging the East-West Application Visibility Gap

To assure the performance of the network, applications, and services, particularly when they reside in the cloud, it is necessary to go beyond monitoring of the north-south traffic across network segments. Visibility must be expanded into virtualized environments to gain deep insights into east-west traffic. NETSCOUT has developed a revolutionary solution to extend the power of its Adaptive Service Intelligence (ASI) packet-data analysis technology to provide end-through-end visibility.

The NSX-T edition of NETSCOUT’s vSTREAM virtual appliance delivers application visibility and assurance directly from the hypervisor. NETSCOUT Smart Data generated by vSTREAM is consumed by NETSCOUT’s proven nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform, delivering smart analytics that address the most challenging application and service disruption issues.

Visibility Without Borders in Action

To demonstrate how this solution can be a game-changer for IT, here’s a brief look at how a well-respected financial services company dealt with gaps in visibility following a data center migration to a VMware NSX-T SDN environment. Making matters worse, the company’s existing network management tools were simply unable to meet the much-needed visibility requirements.

This financial services organization turned to NETSCOUT to solve the problem. vSTREAM for NSX-T environments delivers critically important east-west traffic visibility, enabling the IT team to quickly identify and resolve issues impacting their customer- and employee-facing financial service applications. The nGeniusONE solution provides what NETSCOUT calls Visibility Without Borders, enabling the company to cost-effectively leverage the same solutions for private or public cloud, co-locations, and software-as-a-service applications as their business requirements evolve.

Read the full case study.

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