Gigamon introduces NetFlow Generation

As a part of the Applications Layer of the Unified Visibility Fabric architecture, the NetFlow Generation application will create NetFlow records, then send the information to one or multiple NetFlow collectors or analysers. Gigamon has traditionally focused on creating features and functionalities to help optimise the tools infrastructure, however, NetFlow Generation will allow our Visibility Fabric to optimise the network. The application can maximise the efficiency of the network itself by assuming the processing necessary to generate NetFlow information that had previously been dedicated within the switch, thereby reducing the burden to the network.

“The NetFlow Generation application is a new and very interesting offering for our customers,” said Shehzad Merchant, chief strategy officer at Gigamon. “This application is unique because it centralises NetFlow Generation, offloads this compute intensive job from the network switches and routers, and does it effectively at high throughput rates for both sampled and unsampled traffic. By making NetFlow Generation an application integral to the Visibility Fabric, all the benefits of Flow Mapping, filtering, replication, can be applied in conjunction with the NetFlow Generation capability, providing a very fine granularity of control. This is really an industry first for the monitoring space.”

NetFlow is a simple way to derive basic information about things like traffic types, usage patterns, top talkers and top applications across systems. The records from the NetFlow Generation application can be exported to multiple collectors concurrently, providing a single flow source for business-critical management applications such as security, billing, capacity planning, and more.

“Users can now leverage Gigamon’s Visibility Fabric for both packet and flow-level visibility in order to drive greater efficiencies in the network and network monitoring systems,” said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “The NetFlow application will provide IT operations teams with the requisite information on network traffic types, relationships between network nodes and usage patterns without utilising a separate appliance for NetFlow Generation or taxing the network. Simultaneously, network, application and security teams can take advantage of the Gigamon Visibility Fabric to provide packet-level visibility required for sniffers, probes and other security or performance analysis tools.”
The NetFlow Generation application is a licensable software application and is targeted for availability in Q1 of 2014.