StealthWatch FlowSensor™ VE Features

The StealthWatch FlowSensor™ VE is a lightweight virtual appliance designed to provide visibility into the virtual network using NetFlow™ traffic accounting technology. The FlowSensor VE monitors all communications across the virtual network backplane, translating Ethernet frames into "flow records" which are sent out of the Virtual Server across the physical network to a dedicated Flow Collector.

How It Works

The FlowSensor VE uses NetFlow traffic accounting technology previously available only in network equipment, such as routers, switches and WAN optimization devices. Once installed on the VMware ESX server, the FlowSensor VE connects to the Service Console API to retrieve information about how the virtual network is configured. Then, the FlowSensor VE captures raw Ethernet frames from the virtual switch, combines the traffic data with information found in the API and sends an account of the traffic across the network to a Flow Collector.

Explore the Anatomy of Virtual Network Visibility.

Out-Of-Band Design

The FlowSensor VE is designed to unobtrusively monitor virtual traffic with minimal impact to the production environment, streaming traffic accounting information out of the virtual server to a Flow Collector server. The FlowSensor requires just 512MB of physical memory, (1) CPU @ 2000MHz and only 1.2GB of disk, yet monitors virtual network traffic rates up to 1Gbps. Lancope achieves this unparalleled speed to resource ratio because the FlowSensor VE does not analyze and only creates flows. Processing, storage, and reporting of flows occur at Lancope's Flow Collector appliance, where dedicated CPU, memory, and disk are available.

Flow Collection

The FlowSensor VE requires a NetFlow v9 capable Flow Collector to provide basic functionality. Implementing the FlowSensor along with Lancope's Flow Collector — the StealthWatch Xe™ for NetFlow appliance — provides advanced functionality and enables full utilization of all NetFlow v9 options templates available within the FlowSensor VE. Lancope's StealthWatch Xe for NetFlow receives, stores, and processes flows generating over 180 unique reports designed to detail every aspect of the virtual network.

Read the StealthWatch FlowSensor VE datasheet