Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Security
  • /
  • NETSCOUT visibility enhanced by AWS expanded support for virtual private cloud traffic mirroring

NETSCOUT visibility enhanced by AWS expanded support for virtual private cloud traffic mirroring


Johannesburg, 29 Apr 2021
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited.
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest provider of on-demand cloud computing platforms, has now expanded its Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) traffic mirroring to support additional select non-Nitro Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance types[1][2]. As a result of this expansion, NETSCOUT is enabled to provide end-to-end visibility for security and service assurance of even more applications and services that are used in AWS.

NETSCOUT, a leading global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics, is distributed throughout Africa by Networks Unlimited.

Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at value-added distributor Networks Unlimited, explains: “Nitro is the underlying platform for the AWS next generation of EC2 instances. Amazon VPC Traffic Mirroring allows you to replicate the network traffic from EC2 instances within your VPC to security and monitoring appliances for use cases such as content inspection, threat monitoring and troubleshooting. Until now, customers could only enable VPC Traffic Mirroring on their Nitro-based EC2 instances.

“This expanded VPC Traffic Mirroring support of EC2 instances enables NETSCOUT to provide end-to-end visibility for security and service assurance of applications and services being used in AWS. This feature is available in all 22 AWS regions where VPC Traffic Mirroring is currently supported, including South Africa[3].”

Customers can now enable VPC Traffic Mirroring on additional instances types that use the Xen-based hypervisor.

  • The instance types that are now supported with this release are C4, D2, G3, G3s, H1, I3, M4, P2, P3, R4, X1 and X1e[4].
  • Mirroring is not supported on the T2, C3, R3 and I2 instance types and previous generation instances[5].

NETSCOUT reports that Amazon VPC traffic mirroring helps NETSCOUT to seamlessly extend its packet-capturing capabilities to AWS and effectively gain visibility without borders into applications and their dependencies in hybrid cloud environments[6]. The traffic mirrored from AWS AMI (Amazon Machine Image) workloads to NETSCOUT virtual probes deployed in AWS is transformed into smart data and analysed to provide deep insights into application performance and security. This real-time, precise and relevant intelligence is delivered across all connected applications and their interactions with the service delivery infrastructure.

As cloud migration and digital transformation continues to accelerate, IT, development and security teams and processes need increased visibility to assure agile service delivery from cloud deployments. Traffic mirroring turned into NETSCOUT smart data in AWS is key to delivering cloud migration success.

Please contact Janco Taljaard at janco.taljaard@nu.co.za for more information.

[1] When you launch an instance, the instance type that you specify determines the hardware of the host computer used for your instance. Each instance type offers different compute, memory and storage capabilities, and is grouped in an instance family based on these capabilities.

[2] An Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance is a virtual server that you can use to run applications in Amazon Web Services (AWS). When setting up an EC2 instance, you can custom-configure CPU, storage, memory and networking resources.

[3] https://d1.awsstatic.com/events/reinvent/2019/REPEAT_1_Best_practices_for_securing_Amazon_VPC_NET306-R1.pdf

[4] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/02/amazon-vpc-traffic-mirroring-supported-select-non-nitro-instance-types/

[5] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/02/amazon-vpc-traffic-mirroring-supported-select-non-nitro-instance-types/

[6] https://www.netscout.com/blog/aws-traffic-mirroring


Share

Networks Unlimited

Networks Unlimited is a value-added distributor, committed to empowering African businesses through innovative technology solutions. Our focus includes the world's leading security, networking, storage, enterprise system management (ESM) and cloud technologies. As a company, we are dedicated to taking our partner ecosystem to new heights. We support our partners through operational excellence, a competitive pricing strategy and strong focus on education, with the view of investing in long-term relationships. We work with competitive, resilient businesses, who are leaders in their field of excellence.

Our offerings include a portfolio of products highly regarded by Gartner, such as Altaro, Attivo Networks, Carbon Black, Cofense, Fortinet, F5, Hitachi VantaraNETSCOUT, NVIDIA, ProLabs, RSA, Rubrik, SentinelOne, SevOne, Silver Peak, Tenable, Tintri and Uplogix.