Flow Analysis in Heterogeneous Cloud Scenarios

Abstract

As enterprises move their private and public services to the cloud, traffic monitoring between clouds becomes crucial and challenging. Compared to on-prem resources, the cost structure in the cloud is very different and requires a good understanding of application topologies and resulting traffic patterns before, during, and after (partial) migration to the cloud. This requires traffic monitoring systems that provide a comprehensive view across enterprise WANs, on-prem services, and multiple cloud providers. We show from an industryperspective how the well-established NetFlow/IPFIX data sources and Flow Logs available on a file basis from cloud providers can be combined in one solution that provides visibility as a single pane of glass to network operations and application owners. We introduce the IsarFlow Flow Logs Transcoder, its features and integration in Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments.