Customer Challenge : Business critical applications running over Nutanix HCI requires continuous observability into application and virtual infrastructure performance along with cyber threat intelligence. East-west activity between virtual workloads (servers, applications) which can run in VMs and/or containers are crucial for customers to gain critical insights into user experience and application and infrastructure performance. Passive observability is a big challenge in virtual environments since network traffic can not be tapped directly as in on premises physical networks.

ThoughtData partners with Nutanix to extend and validate Enterprise360 unified observability platform in the Nutanix Ecosystem.

Unified observability is now possible in Nutanix AHV environments with ThoughtData’s Enterprise360 software and NetSense, InfraSense sensors fully qualified and validated in AHV environments.

Nutanix customers in need of critical east-west network traffic observability has several options to tap Subnet based or VM to VM or entire hypervisor traffic to ThoughtData NetSense virtual sensor working as a VM on same hypervisor using the network function chain configuration in the AHV. A sample deployment is illustrated above.

Simple steps to get ThoughtData unified observability working in Nutanix AHV environment

• Spin off a linux based VM on the Nutanix AHV using Prism, install ThoughtData Enteprise360 software on the VM

• Spin off linux based VM on the Nutanix AHV using Prism, install ThoughtData NetSense Packet Sensor

• Follow instructions in “Configuring Service Chains and Network Functions guide in AHV”, Setup a network function service chain in TAP mode on the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, Decide if you need a VM to VM traffic mirroring or Subnet based or entire AHV traffic visibility according to your monitoring requirements.

• Attach the service chain to the NetSense VM, you will now see a new virtual interface on the NetSense VM

• Start the NetSense packet sensor on the service chain virtual interface and point NetSense to Enterprise360

• You are now ready for Unified Observability in Nutanix AHV environment with full scale east-west traffic visibility

• Replicate the same configuration in each AHV, you would need one NetSense VM per AHV, use AHV cloning options to replicate the NetSense VMs as needed across AHV cluster using Prism

• Enterprise360 supports multi node cluster and Enterprise360 VMs can be spawned in any AHVs in the cluster and need not co-exist in same AHV as NetSense VM as along as there is a network connectivity for communication

Get the power of Unified observability in Nutanix HCI environments with ThoughtData Enterprise360 and Nutanix validated AHV integrated solution

Contact ThoughtData technical support to get a copy of Nutanix Service Chain and Network Function configuration guide to setup unified observability in Nutanix HCI environments