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VirtualView: Taking the Mystery and Risk Out of Virtualization

Establishing Measurement to Drive Efficiency
Virtualized network environments hold great promise for businesses that demand agility and efficiency from the capital and operating expenses invested in these areas.  However, using wiring diagrams, spreadsheets and server locations are no longer adequate to troubleshoot network issues.

Force10’s VirtualView – a native feature of Force10’s operating system (FTOS) – offers a core-to-edge, real-time traffic analysis solution that samples and analyzes data to establish baseline and ongoing application performance statistics. With a baseline of overall measurement in place, data center managers can offer service level agreements for virtualized machines (VMs) and applications that can be monitored and enforced for internal and external customers.  Leveraging VirtualView helps roll out new VM-based services rapidly with lower TCO.

VirtualView Benefits for Measurement & Monitoring

By collecting real-time traffic statistics on VMs using sFlow sampling technology, VirtualView monitors, troubleshoots and benchmarks network performance in virtualized environments. sFlow software is embedded in FTOS and provides the ability to continuously monitor application-level traffic flows at wire speed on all interfaces (reference: http://www.sflow.org/sFlowOverview.pdf).

Leveraging technology from partners InMon Corporation and Plixer International, sFlow collectors receive and analyze sFlow data collected from switches and routers in the data center or core of the network. These sFlow collectors are widely deployed by Force10 customers today enabling them to optimize and control bandwidth delivery to VMs by looking at real-time data and then updating Quality of Service (QoS) policies on switches/routers.

Force10 VirtualView Automates Network Behavior

Data center managers use virtualization to optimize resource utilization, increase agility and reduce overall complexity.  A key enabler to managing VMs is the ability to automate network behavior to support changes in network demands as application and virtual machine assignments change.

Force10’s FTOS can respond to command line interface (CLI) commands from an orchestration platform or management tool to change Virtual LAN (VLAN) assignments, resulting in automatically provisioning and managing VMs.  This helps data center managers tune resource pools to deliver greater application agility, flexibility and efficiency while reducing total cost of ownership.

VirtualView Benefits for Network Automation
By using Force10 switch/routers in conjunction with orchestration platforms, such as Cassatt® Active Response, data center managers can better control network resources and VM pools. VirtualView also enables the response to industry-standard protocols, such as CLI or SNMP MIBs, to change VLAN assignments and deliver policy-based dynamic control of the pools of resources available to applications.

Cohesive Solution Set Brings Additional Value

VirtualView is available through FTOS, which is built on a modular NetBSD kernel and available across the versatile Force10 switch/router product lines. Leveraging the FTOS Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and portable software architecture, the same VirtualView application software is available across all Force10 platforms, bringing interface protocols to VirtualView are consistent from core to edge.  FTOS also features an industry-standard CLI so administrators new to implementing Force10 solutions can quickly deploy the devices with minimal training.

For more information, visit http://www.force10networks.com/applications/ApplicationNotes/an-virtualview.asp

FTOS Features and Benefits

FTOS provides the consistency, reliability, scalability and serviceability required to streamline network management, reduce unplanned downtime related to operational error and lower the total cost of network ownership.

FTOS Specifications

FTOS Literature