Centralized Orchestration and Management of the Packet Flow Switch Fabric

nGenius PFS Fabric Manager is a central management pane of glass that enables users to easily configure, deploy, and troubleshoot monitoring networks consisting of the nGenius 5000 and 7000 series packet flow switches and nGenius Packet Flow eXtender Software. It provides an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface with powerful but simple-to-use workflows that cover the three major areas, or lifecycles, of a packet flow switch system: configuration, deployment, and monitoring. Inline toolchains are configured via the Inline lifecycle.

Benefits

Single Pane of Glass

Manage your fleet of PFS and PFX from a single interface.

Intuitive, Drag-n-Drop UI

Browser-based (HTML5) UI makes easy work of configuring and monitoring your PFS.

Graphical Topologies

Graphical topologies make even complicated configurations easy to set up – and to understand.

Features

Configure Lifecycle

Users configure devices (PFS and PFX), ports, and logical entities such as filters in the Configure Lifecycle.
Deploy Lifecycle

Users configure traffic flows (from TAPs to tools) in the Deploy Lifeycle.
Inline Lifecycle

Users configure inline toolchains in the Inline Lifeycle.
Monitor Lifecycle

Users monitor PFS status, health, and statistics in the Monitor Lifeycle.

In the Configure Lifecycle, users can easily configure physical hardware such as switches and ports. Reusable logical elements like filters and load balance groups can be configured for drag-and-drop deployment onto graphical topologies. Intelligent workflows allow users to easily create and edit these logical entities, allowing for quick and easy changes to deployment.

Configure Lifecycle

Users configure devices (PFS and PFX), ports, and logical entities such as filters in the Configure Lifecycle.

In the Deploy Lifeycle, users use graphical topologies to configure flows of traffic, typically from TAPs to the PFS and then out to probes such as NETSCOUT’s InfiniStream® platform. (Tabular topologies are also available for users who prefer a non-graphical view.)

Topology changes are only published to the devices when the user is ready, allowing pre-staging of changes. Topology versioning allows quick rollback when needed.

pfsMesh makes transport through the monitoring fabric transparent to the user: just connect an ingress port on one PFS to an egress port on another PFS and pfsMesh handles the rest.

Deploy Lifecycle

Users configure traffic flows (from TAPs to tools) in the Deploy Lifeycle.

In the Inline Lifecycle, users use graphical topologies to configure their active inline toolchains. Inline topologies are more structured than passive monitoring (Deployment Lifecycle) topologies, allowing the user to graphically configure toolchains and the Inline Network ports whose traffic is sent through the toolchains. PFS Fabric Manager’s graphical representation of inline configurations makes even complex inline configurations intuitive.

As with passive monitoring topologies, changes are not made to the underlying infrastructure until the user chooses to push the configuration to the switches and topology versioning allows quick rollback when needed.

Inline Lifecycle

Users configure inline toolchains in the Inline Lifeycle.

In the Monitor Lifecycle, users oversee the health of managed PFS including status, statistics, and logs.

Monitor Lifecycle

Users monitor PFS status, health, and statistics in the Monitor Lifeycle.