VMware vRealize Network Insight

This section provides a brief about the VMware vRealize Network Insight.

vRealize Network Insight is part of the data center operations and analytics suite of products used to monitor the vCloud NFV platform. vRealize Network Insight offers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security across virtual and physical infrastructure with micro-segmentation planning that can be scaled to thousands of VNFs offering 360-degree visibility. vRealize Network Insight is installed in the Management pod in both two-pod and three-pod designs.

vRealize Network Insight is configured to monitor all networking-related components in the NFVI. vRealize Network Insight can connect to the VMware Integrated OpenStack NFV components relating to networking and security and can provide valuable insight into the networking segements used to deploy and manage the vCloud NFV platform. The management VLANs, external VLANs and VXLAN segments are all available for monitoring and diagnostics.

It can also be configured to monitor a myriad of physical devices such as Dell switches, Cisco Nexus and Catalyst switches, and Arista, Juniper Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Brocade, and Palo Alto Networks switches.

The vRealize Network Insight architecture consists of a platform VM, a proxy VM, and data sources. The role of the platform VM within the architecture is to perform analytics, storage, and to provide a user interface into the data. The proxy VM, or the collector, collects data from sources using various protocols such as HTTPS, SSH, CLI, and SNMP, depending on the source and the configuration. A variety of data sources are supported, including VMware vCenter, NSX, firewalls, and various switch vendors. To provide a complete overview of the NFV environment, vRealize Network Insight is connected to the vCenter Server that is used to operate the edge and resource clusters as is shown in Figure 20.