Delivering network observability

Network Observability for Contextual Visibility

Today’s enterprise network visibility is evolving to support real-time demands of distributed users and IoT devices. As the lifeline for digital communications, network traffic analysis is paramount for delivering real-time client-to-application to cloud experience.  To address these challenges, Arista is introducing a new generation of network observability – to bring cloud networking principles, data analytics and contextual insights. By integrating its Data Analyzer (DANZ) with acquired Big Switch’s monitoring fabric software, Arista is introducing the DANZ Monitoring Fabric (DMF) software for enterprise-wide network observability.

The DMF offering is based upon Arista’s popular switching platforms with optional advanced nodes including:

• Service Node software for packet processing, optimization and flow generation
• Analytics Node software for deep context-aware traffic analysis and machine learning
• Recorder Node software for full packet capture, query and replay with built-in application identification

“The Arista DMF offers an elegant and integrated system, instead of multiple legacy point products, simplifying operational workflows, speeding up incident management and issue resolution as well as reducing capex and opex costs,” said Alan Weckel Founder and Technology Analyst for 650 Group. “Arista’s DMF redefines network visibility from reactive to contextual as the market is rapidly automating to scale to the explosion of data coming from cloud applications and IoT devices.”

Network Observability is Next Generation of Network Visibility

Regulatory compliance and cybersecurity hardening mandate enterprise-wide, pervasive network observability for north-south as well as east-west traffic. Legacy network packet broker (NPB) approaches that rely on complicated scale-up designs are inefficient, complex to operate and cost-prohibitive to deploy and manage for east-west traffic.

Arista DMF is optimized for pervasive observability based on cloud networking principles using scale-out leaf-spine, clustering architecture and API-first programmability model. The DMF console provides zero-touch workflows to streamline enterprise-wide deployment, thereby accelerating service activation. DMF’s unique multi-tenant capability enables NetOps, SecOps and DevOps teams to consume DMF as an IT service to reduce monitoring costs further.

Network Time Machine for Contextual Insights

To rapidly resolve a network performance issue or to detect a threat, the IT operator needs to rewind the network state to the occurrence of the anomalous event. Legacy solutions require complex hopping and hunting across multiple discrete devices, extending the mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR).

Arista DMF is the industry's leading solution to deliver a fully integrated network time machine experience. DMF’s system-level approach delivers metadata and associated contexts to the Analytics Node cluster and packet capture to the Recorder Node cluster. This integrated one-click workflow across nodes allows operators to zero-in on anomalies that have occurred in the past by instantaneously retrieving historical network traffic. The DMF Analytic Node’s machine learning capability dynamically identifies anomalous network behaviors through auto-baselining. For tracing malicious activities, The DMF Recorder Node provides one-click traffic replay to designated security tools in order to recreate their spreading behavior.

Mission-critical Observability for Cybersecurity

Mission-critical monitoring also demands lossless packet delivery to security tools which necessitates the use of deep buffer platforms. With DMF’s support for Arista’s flagship 7280R3 platforms with 25G and 100G interfaces, Arista assures reliable observability solutions for mission-critical monitoring. DMF’s flexible fabric ensures security tools receive all relevant network traffic to detect and hunt threats. DMF integrates with Awake Security’s Network Detection and Response (NDR) -- Arista’s recent security acquisition -- to deliver traffic to various NDR ingests points, thus bringing zero-trust security to enterprises.