Reuters: A second SolarWinds vulnerability

Chinese hackers may have exploited a second vulnerability in SolarWind's Orion platform to gain access to the National Finance Center, a federal payroll agency inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to Reuters. The intrusion apparently occurred independently of the Russian hackers who gained access to hundreds of U.S. government and Fortune 1000 networks.

It is not clear yet how many other organizations may have been impacted by this second attack vector. SolarWinds has not yet commented on the matter.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-solarwinds-china/exclusive-suspected-chinese-hackers-used-solarwinds-bug-to-spy-on-u-s-payroll-agency-sources-idUSKBN2A22K8

Read More

Palo Alto Networks responds to SolarStorm

In a company blog post, Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, writes: "We will soon be talking about this as one of the most serious cyberattacks in history. Tainted updates to SolarWinds Orion software were distributed for months before they were identified, positioning attackers to obtain administrative privileges and establish long-term network access – potential for a complete compromise of an organization by malicious actors. We must come together to defend against an attack of this magnitude."

Also discussed in the posting:

• Palo Alto Networks itself experienced an attempt to download Cobalt Strike on one of its IT SolarWinds servers, but its Cortex XDR instantly blocked the attempt with our Behavioral Threat Prevention capability and our SOC isolated the server.
• Due to the disclosures on December 13, the company has reanalyzed its entire infrastructure extensively one more time to ensure that it has not been compromised.
• Arora remains confident that Palo Alto Networks continues to be secure.
• Palo Alto Networks is now offering a free SolarStorm rapid assessment to determine if customers have been compromised by this threat actor.

https://blog.paloaltonetworks.com/2020/12/solarwinds-statement-solarstorm/

Read More

SolarWinds completes IPO

Shares in SolarWinds, which provides IT management software, began trading on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "SWI".  The company offered 25,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $15.00 per share. Trading on Friday, 19-October-2018, closed at $15.03.

SolarWinds, which is based in Austin, Texas, began operations in 1999 and completed its first IPO in 2009 as a point provider of on-premise network management products. In February  2016,  the company was acquired by affiliates of investment firms Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo and went private.

https://www.solarwinds.com/

Read More

Perspectives 2017: Today’s Internet of Things Reality

And an analysis of the why and how of developing an IoT strategy

by Patrick Hubbard, Head Geek, SolarWinds

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been a buzzword for quite a while now. For many, it conjures up images of smart thermostats, home security systems, app-powered office coffeemakers, and even internet-connected crockpots. Consumer IoT devices such as these, often referred to as internet-connected appliances, are certainly experiencing exponential growth, but the growth of business or industrial IoT is even more astounding: Gartner estimates that there will 21 billion endpoints in use by 2020, resulting in massive potential for data generation in 2020.

The Challenges of IoT

Enterprise and industrial IoT devices themselves can be very helpful in determining such things as soil moisture in smart agriculture, improving asset tracking in the shipping industry, and determining temperature and utilization in a manufacturing facility. However, the sheer volume of these devices presents an issue when they are added to a network without a strategy, much like BYOD when it first came about.

But unlike with phones, tablets, or laptops, a majority of IT professionals managing networks with IoT-connected devices aren’t conducting software updates on the devices; instead, the primary focus has been on how these appliances can be used in novel ways, with the risks of their unmonitored internet connectivity falling by the wayside. This common oversight and its consequences were illustrated via the recent Dyn DDoS attack—many of the devices used in the attack were connected to corporate networks and improperly monitored. In consequence, we need to stop thinking about IoT as “BYOD on steroids.” Instead, we need very different and customized strategies because IoT has the power to disrupt operations in a dangerous way.

Thus, it’s clear that IoT devices are changing networks and our ability to monitor and manage them. With that in mind, it’s important to note IoT device class (0, 1, or 2). This refers to the variety of ways the network is affected by IoT devices. Class 0 devices are light, use low power and aren’t truly IoT devices that require dramatic shifts in the way we monitor and manage our networks

Monitoring and management of classes 1 and 2 are a different story, though. Managing class 1 and 2 IoT devices comes down to managing access properties on the routers and switches that allow devices to get to the internet. Monitoring these devices is more application traffic-specific, calling for Netflow or quality-of-service (QoS) in order to see what the devices are doing because they won’t typically allow for SNMP or provide a management interface to determine performance. This factor makes security information and event management (SIEM) and important consideration as well—you need to be able to detect that a network device is conducting a port scan or file share logons, for example.

In terms of capacity planning, if you believe the estimation of billions of devices in use by 2020, then we will undoubtedly overwhelm our networks in ways we can’t even imagine right now. If subnetting is a problem now, with the typical and somewhat manageable systems, then the order of magnitude brought on by IoT devices would likely force companies into IPv6, which they may not be ready for. They will cause transience with IP addresses and difficulty understanding what the bandwidth is of any given device—different devices have different behaviors, and they all communicate with different servers. Some will be well-optimized for this, and some won’t be. The retail industry, as an example, uses immense hyper-personalization based on IoT, so network capacity and utilization is of utmost importance. In order to avoid latency or downtime, they will need to undertake tremendous network capacity planning and utilization, or risk their reputation and customer experience.

The Benefits of an IoT Strategy

Although it may seem like the industry is moving at too rapid of a pace for you to slow down and implement and test an effective IoT strategy, it’s imperative to do so; the fact that there are a multitude of adoptable standards in existence already may help.

The first and perhaps most obvious benefit of implementing an IoT strategy is the reduced risk of data breach. Without knowledge of possible vulnerabilities, your organization may be open to security compromises in ways that could be harmful to your business and appear to come out of left field, although they could have been left unnoticed for a long period of time. A recent yet admittedly simple poll of IT professionals showed that while some organizations still don’t manage any IoT devices (or none that IT knows about), some, even in regulated industries such as healthcare, manage thousands of devices without following specific protocol.

The second benefit is financial: organizations can anticipate extra costs by conducting capacity planning and network management before IoT devices are put on a network. Additionally, organizations will be more likely to obtain what they set out to in the first place: bottom line savings advantages gained by implementing innovative IoT devices; for example, in HVAC efficiency, physical security, short lead manufacturing efficiency, and production rate optimization in the supply chain. Companies who are using IoT in truly transformative ways within the framework of formulated strategies for their customers will be the first out of the gate to experience unprecedented benefits.

Getting Started On an IoT Strategy

As a first step to gaining knowledge and control over IoT, you should take inventory of what you already have happening from an IoT device perspective within your environment. Without this baseline knowledge, there’s no way to move ahead with any kind of semblance of a strategy.

Next, you need to come to the table with business executives and discuss what they intend to do with IoT devices. Seek to understand how many devices there may be and what type.

Once there’s collective agreement about how many IoT devices will be in your environment, it’s up to you to formulate a security policy, outlining what’s acceptable in terms of risk. This is also dependent on your industry—retail versus financial services versus healthcare, for example. You may need to consider PCI, HIPAA and other compliance issues. The security policy will also drive reconsideration of network and security segmentation.

When having these conversations with business leaders, it’s also a time to calculate business risk and put a hard, defensible number behind the financial hit to the business in the event of a serious security breach as a result of IoT. Once you are able to calculate financial damage estimations, then it becomes easier to have discussions with management about security, network security, configuration, performance and quality of experience (QoE) monitoring needs.

In addition to aligning with the business on security policies and business risks, this is also the time to consider what to do with the huge amounts of data the devices will generate. And because so many organizations are moving towards hybrid IT, you may need to consider how both on-premises and cloud data will be managed from a services, applications, and storage perspective, in order to best manipulate the data to improve marketing, service delivery, or increase yield in a factory setting.

Conclusion

IoT should be an active concern for you. If you’re not already, you will soon be asked to manage more and more network-connected devices, resulting in security issues and a monumental challenge in storing, managing and analyzing mountains of data. The risk is that without a proper strategy to do so, you’ll be tackling all this on an ad hoc basis on an ad hoc basis. Instead, stop what you’re doing and start developing your IoT strategy. Begin by surveying your network today to get a baseline, then come to the table with your organization’s IoT stakeholders to determine why they need IoT and how they plan to use the devices, discuss the security implications and define a security policy, and decide what to do with all the data the devices will generate. Doing this, ahead of time if still possible, will help you ensure that your organization doesn’t become an IoT victim, but an IoT victor.

About the Author

Patrick Hubbard is a head geek and senior technical product marketing manager at SolarWinds. With 20 years of technical expertise and IT customer perspective, his networking management experience includes work with campus, data center, storage networks, VoIP and virtualization, with a focus on application and service delivery in both Fortune 500 companies and startups in high tech, transportation, financial services and telecom industries.

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable hybrid IT infrastructure management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500® enterprises to small businesses, government agencies and educational institutions. We are committed to focusing exclusively on IT Pros, and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. Regardless of where the IT asset or user sits, SolarWinds delivers products that are easy to find, buy, use, maintain and scale while providing the power to address all key areas of the infrastructure from on premises to the cloud. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our thwack online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. 

Got an idea for a Blueprint column?  We welcome your ideas on next gen network architecture.
See our guidelines.

Read More

Solarwinds Brings Visibility in Hybrid IT

SolarWinds release a major update to its flagship Network Performance Monitor (NPM) tool that now gives network administrators the hybrid IT visual insights and analysis needed for visibility into the performance of services across not only the networks they own—but those of their service providers and cloud vendors as well.

Specifically, SolarWinds NPM 12 now features NetPath and Network Insight, providing the ability to view the performance details of and pinpoint bottlenecks on all the networks connecting critical services and applications, whether they be on-premises or in the cloud.

The SolarWinds NPM 12 network monitoring software visually maps hybrid network paths alongside on-premises data. For example, NetPath gives IT professionals whose organizations use cloud-based applications such as Salesforce® the ability to identify the exact location of a performance issue—whether on the internal LAN, with a WAN provider or on the cloud application vendor’s own network—and provides actionable insights for resolution. Specific NetPath features include:

• Dynamic and visual hop-by-hop analysis of critical paths and devices along the entire network delivery path—on-premises, in the cloud or across hybrid IT environments.
• Specific, actionable information to resolve network issues regardless of network ownership.
• Automatic and dynamic thresholds to identify unhealthy critical paths and network nodes, providing an estimated 50 percent faster time to resolution.
• Visualized critical path performance over time for historical views of network latency.
• Identification of device configuration changes along critical paths when integrated with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager.
• Immediate insight into the traffic travelling across flow-enabled devices impacting network performance when integrated with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

“Applications, whether on-premises or in the cloud, are the heart of business, but they’re useless without the networks that connect them to end users,” said Christoph Pfister, executive vice president of products, SolarWinds. “Until now, the capabilities to monitor the performance of those networks regardless of ownership were impossible within a single tool—traceroute tools are typically blocked from accessing service provider networks, and cloud monitoring tools don’t have adequate visibility into on-premises infrastructure performance. With NetPath and Network Insight, SolarWinds NPM 12 is delivering the dynamic visibility and actionable insights IT professionals need to effectively manage all the networks impacting the applications their organizations rely on in a hybrid IT world—every node, every path, every network.”
http://www.solarwinds.com

Read More

Blueprint: Monitoring as a Discipline and the Network Administrator

by Leon Adato, Head Geek, SolarWinds

As IT professionals, we know our way around data centers like the backs of our hands. But what consistently surprises me when I speak with other admins is the general lack of knowledge about and resources put towards what we at SolarWinds call monitoring as a discipline, especially as it pertains to monitoring networks.

Evolution of the network

The network is a complex thing, and it has evolved considerably over the past decade.

For example, the network used to be defined by a mostly wired, physical entity controlled by routers and switches. Business connections were based on T1 and ISDN, and Internet connectivity was always backhauled through the data center. Each network device was a piece of company-owned hardware, and applications operated on well-defined ports and protocols. VoIP was used infrequently, and anywhere connectivity—if even a thing—was provided by the low-quality bandwidth of cell-based Internet access.

Today, however, wireless is becoming ubiquitous—it’s even overtaking wired networks in many instances—and the number of devices wirelessly connecting to the network is exploding (think Internet of Things). It doesn’t end there, though—networks are growing in all directions. Some network devices are even virtualized, resulting in a complex amalgam of the physical, the virtual and the Internet. Business connections are DSL/cable and Ethernet services. BYOD, BYOA, tablets and smartphones are prevalent and are creating bandwidth capacity and security issues. Application visibility based on port and protocol is largely impossible due to applications tunneling via HTTP/HTTPS. VOIP is common, also imposing higher demands on network bandwidth, and LTE provides high-quality anywhere connectivity.  

And the future isn’t looking any simpler. The Internet of Things (IoT); software defined networking (SDN); and hybrid IT, with its accompanying challenge of ensuring acceptable quality of service to meet the business performance needs for any given service delivered via a cloud provider, are all cresting the horizon.

What’s my point? These trends, challenges and complexities underscore a new set of monitoring and management essentials.

Enter monitoring as a discipline

What is monitoring as a discipline?

Monitoring as a discipline varies from simply monitoring in that it is an actual role, the defined job of one or more individuals within an organization, not just something “everyone kind of does when it’s needed.” The most important benefit of such a dedicated role is the ability to turn data points from various monitoring tools and utilities into more actionable insights for the business by looking at all of them from a holistic vantage point, rather than each disparately.

Although such a monitoring-dedicated individual or team is in reality probably only likely at larger organizations at this point in time, small- and medium-sized businesses may want to take note, as their infrastructures, all of which rely on the backbone known as the network, are only going to get more complex, bringing the need for even them to create such a role into sharp focus. Don’t believe me? Think about how common hiring a dedicated information security professional was ten years ago—nearly unheard of. But today, many organizations of almost every size consider this to be a necessity given the constant specter of security breaches.

Now reflect on how IT environments, not just the network, have grown, both in size and complexity, being distributed across geographies more than ever. In turn, monitoring them has equally grown in complexity. In fact, due to hybrid IT, it has become extremely difficult to pinpoint the root cause of issues—whether they lie with the cloud services provider or the organization’s internal network itself.

Thus, the “old way” of monitoring, where network admins, server admins and storage admins, etc. each operate in silos, monitoring only within their specific realm without much if any cross-silo oversight, is no longer really a viable option. By employing an expert who monitors as a specific discipline across all of the traditional silos can provide a cohesive view across an organization’s IT spectrum, making root cause analysis much more efficient and accurate, reducing costs in the process.

Expanding monitoring skillsets

All that said, given budget constraints, the reality for IT departments at many small- and medium-sized businesses will be one without such a dedicated monitoring expert for at least the near future. If having a dedicated monitoring expert is not in the cards for now, the next step is to expand your current IT team’s monitoring skillset. At minimum, your team should at least be able to effectively monitor:

• Hardware
• Networks (i.e. NetFlow and syslog)
• Applications
• Virtualization
• Configurations

Configuration monitoring is especially important because when it comes to configs—what changed as well as the exact moment the change was made is critical to both the security and stability of entire environments. In fact, 80 percent of all corporate outages are caused by unexpected or uncontrolled config changes. And, in all honesty, in the absence of a dedicated monitoring expert, we generalist network admins are perhaps best positioned to step in and corral all this monitoring data into one cohesive set of actionable insights.

In conclusion

As the network becomes more complex and expands in nearly every direction, monitoring as a discipline will become more critical to business success. In summary, companies of all sizes should consider:

• Adding a dedicated monitoring expert or experts who can provide a holistic view of the organization’s infrastructure performance, turning seemingly disparate data points gathered by monitoring tools into valuable, actionable insights.
• If a dedicated expert is not possible, ensure the current IT team understands the nuances of monitoring hardware, networks, applications, virtualization and configurations and has a comprehensive, but not necessarily expensive, suite of monitoring tools available.
• Putting network admins in charge of corralling all this monitoring data.

About the Author

Leon Adato is a Head Geek and technical evangelist at SolarWinds, and is a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), MCSE and SolarWinds Certified Professional (he was once a customer, after all). Before he was a SolarWinds Head Geek, Adato was a SolarWinds® user for over a decade. His expertise in IT began in 1989 and has led him through roles as a classroom instructor, courseware designer, desktop support tech, server support engineer, and software distribution expert. His career includes key roles at Rockwell Automation®, Nestle, PNC, and CardinalHealth providing server standardization, support, and network management and monitoring.


About SolarWinds 
SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable hybrid IT infrastructure management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500® enterprises to small businesses, government agencies and educational institutions. We are committed to focusing exclusively on IT Pros, and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. Regardless of where the IT asset or user sits, SolarWinds delivers products that are easy to find, buy, use, maintain and scale while providing the power to address all key areas of the infrastructure from on premises to the cloud. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our thwack online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at www.solarwinds.com. 

Got an idea for a Blueprint column?  We welcome your ideas on next gen network architecture.
See our guidelines.

Read More

Blueprint: Network Capacity Planning and Bandwidth Management in the IoT Era

by Leon Adato, Head Geek, SolarWinds

Enterprise network architecture has certainly evolved; from flat networks where everything was interconnected, to hierarchical models with enhanced security and now to a borderless world. But the one network metric that has remained a priority despite these changes is bandwidth, and by extension the individual traffic flows that comprise it.

Many enterprises have treated bandwidth as the elephant in the room—they have awareness of it and the tools to monitor it, but don’t have nearly enough insight into its usage. They don’t have visibility into usage history. They can’t correlate past performance to future trends. They lack any way to get a breakdown from the “big number” (bandwidth usage) to the root of the problem.

This has to change because, quite frankly, bandwidth is running out, and has been for some time now. What’s more is that there are additional bandwidth-hogging trends starting to crest the horizon.

Where We’re At

Already, BYOD and cloud have added extra layers of complexity when it comes to managing the network. With users connecting externally obtained devices such as cell phones, tablets, smart watches and even personal personal computers to corporate environments on top of corporate-provided devices, we’ve seen an exponential increase in bandwidth consumption. Furthermore, as more infrastructure is moved to the cloud, the network connections needed on that offsite infrastructure have also grown in both number and criticality. As a result, we network administrators have been tasked with redesigning networking schemes to adapt to these changes.

For those of us who have been through this and lived to tell the tale, we know that the key to success in the era of network complexity is preparedness in the form of network capacity planning and bandwidth management. Having a plan to manage current bandwidth issues and regularly analyze utilization information will best set us up to stay ahead of future issues that may arise.

Where We’re Going

Speaking of, what might be considered the second—yet much more challenging—installment of the bandwidth-hogging BYOD trend is fast approaching. Enter another now (in)famous acronym—IoT, or the Internet of Things.

Yes, it’s true that soon, even your company’s toaster oven may be connected to the network, along with a host of other devices and appliances—it won’t just be a swarm of HVAC, lighting and security controls or intelligent shop-floor tools that will expect Internet access; delivery trucks, trailers, shipping containers, smart pallets with onboard GPS, inventory management routing, sort and delivery elements, scanners and sensors of every variety will become Internet “things” using network protocols and bandwidth in unexpected ways. With more network devices in play than ever before, there will be an explosion of network traffic to accommodate the massive data volume, resulting in a harder time regulating the network. While some of the bandwidth being used will of course remain strictly internal, at the end of the day it’s all competing traffic, and competing traffic at a volume we haven’t had to account for in the past.

On top of that, because IoT will fundamentally change the way we humans interact with our environments, the ensuing complexities won’t just be about device and bandwidth entitlement added to the fully burdened cost of each employee. Environments will respond to the presence of humans, and user context—person, authentication, location, traffic, application—will all need to flow seamlessly as people move across traditional IT boundaries. So, as another consequence of IoT, IT departments will need to work closer than ever with the CIO, as well as legal, HR and other business departments.

And of course, it will be left up to us network engineers to sort all of this out.

Getting a Grip on IoT Network Capacity Planning and Bandwidth Management

If you’re like me, it probably seems like you’ve just barely gotten BYOD under control. The good news is that we learned some valuable lessons during that (long) process that are very applicable to getting a grip on IoT network capacity planning and bandwidth issues, too.

First and foremost is the need to closely monitor traffic—and not just the raw volume of network traffic, but application traffic, too. When it comes to IoT, traditional approaches like NetFlow will still be valuable, but IoT traffic will be more about application awareness than simple traffic monitoring and management. Quality of service monitoring is also very important, keeping in mind that IoT device responsiveness will be more important than traditional bandwidth-consuming things like email. Paradoxically, latency and reachability will be top priorities over limiting traffic.

And it won’t be enough to simply be a data collection platform or even a metrics dashboard solution. This monitoring will need to analyze more data than ever before, and transform it into concise, useful information to help us troubleshoot bandwidth-related network performance problems. Providing the breadth and depth of information needed to support devices, applications and networks in the era of IoT can only be done with an end-to-end, comprehensive monitoring solution.

As part of capacity planning for IoT, it will also be important to get IP address management under control and get gear ready for IPv6, which is what most IoT devices will prefer. Traditionally, many of us have managed IP address infrastructure with manual processes, which is labor-intensive, time-consuming and error prone. In addition, it leads to decentralized, fragmented, and outdated data. A simple request for a single new IP assignment can result in many hours of work, complex coordination and the likelihood for errors and conflicts, which in turn, can lead to a plethora of network problems. Just imagine what this will all look like when innumerable IoT devices start requiring their own addresses.

Finally, automate, automate, automate. In the IoT era, automating as much network management as possible will be more important than ever. At a time when there will be more devices accessing the network than you can shake a stick at, automation solutions will help to more quickly correct issues as they arise and will provide immediate remediation to reduce response times, significantly reducing potential network downtime due to any number of IoT-related capacity and bandwidth issues.

While it may seem crazy to say so, network capacity planning and bandwidth management in the IoT era really does not need to be a daunting task—we’ve been down this road before with BYOD. It’s simply a matter of remembering what worked then, being aware of the subtle differences we’ll experience with IoT and planning for them.

About the Author 
Leon Adato is a Head Geek and technical evangelist at SolarWinds, and is a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), MCSE and SolarWinds Certified Professional (he was once a customer, after all). Before he was a SolarWinds Head Geek, Adato was a SolarWinds® user for over a decade. His expertise in IT began in 1989 and has led him through roles as a classroom instructor, courseware designer, desktop support tech, server support engineer, and software distribution expert. His career includes key roles at Rockwell Automation®, Nestle, PNC, and CardinalHealth providing server standardization, support, and network management and monitoring.

About SolarWinds 
SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable hybrid IT infrastructure management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500® enterprises to small businesses, government agencies and educational institutions. We are committed to focusing exclusively on IT Pros, and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. Regardless of where the IT asset or user sits, SolarWinds delivers products that are easy to find, buy, use, maintain and scale while providing the power to address all key areas of the infrastructure from on premises to the cloud. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our thwack online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at www.solarwinds.com.

Got an idea for a Blueprint column?  We welcome your ideas on next gen network architecture.
See our guidelines.

Read More

Blueprint: The Evolution of the Network - Part Two

by Leon Adato, Head Geek, SolarWinds

If you’re not prepared for the future of networking, you’re already behind.

That may sound harsh, but it’s true. Given the speed at which technology evolves compared to the rate most of us typically evolve in terms of our skillsets, there’s no time to waste in preparing ourselves to manage and monitor the networks of tomorrow. Yes, this is a bit of a daunting proposition considering the fact that some of us are still trying to catch up with today’s essentials of network monitoring and management, but the reality is that they’re not really mutually exclusive, are they?

In part of one this series, I outlined how the networks of today have evolved from those of yesteryear, and what today’s new essentials of network monitoring and management are as a consequence. By paying careful attention, you will likely have picked up on ways the lessons from the past that I described helped shape those new essentials.

Similarly, today’s essentials will help shape those of tomorrow. Thus, as I said, getting better at leveraging today’s essentials of network monitoring and managing is not mutually exclusive from preparing for the networks of tomorrow.

Before delving into what the next generation of network monitoring and management will look like, it’s important to first explore what the next generation of networking will look like.

On the Horizon

Above all else, one thing is for certain: We networking professionals should expect tomorrow’s technology to create more complex networks resulting in even more complex problems to solve. With that in mind, here are the top networking trends that are likely to shape the networks of the future:

Networks growing in all directions
Fitbits, tablets, phablets and applications galore. The explosion of IoT, BYOD, BYOA and BYO-everything else is upon us. With this trend still in its infancy, the future of connected devices and applications will be not only about the quantity of connected devices, but also the quality of their connections tunneling network bandwidth.

But it goes beyond the gadgets end users bring into the environment. More and more, commodity devices such as HVAC infrastructure, environmental systems such as lighting, security devices and more all use bandwidth—cellular or WiFi—to communicate outbound and receive updates and instructions inbound. Companies are using, or planning to use, IoT devices to track product, employees and equipment. This explosion of devices that consume or produce data will, not might, create a potentially disruptive explosion in bandwidth consumption, security concerns and monitoring and management requirements.

IPv6 eventually takes the stage…or sooner (as in now!)
Recently, ARIN was unable to fulfill a request for IPv4 addresses because the request was greater than the contiguous blocks available. Meanwhile, IPv6 is now almost always enabled by default and is therefore creating challenges for IT professionals even if they, and their organizations, have committed to putting off their own IPv6 decisions. The upshot of all this is that IPv6 is a reality today. There is an inevitable and quickly approaching moment when switching over will no longer be an option, but a requirement.

SDN and NFV will become the mainstream
Software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are just in their infancy and should be expected to become mainstream in the next five to seven years. With SDN and virtualization creating new opportunities for hybrid infrastructure, a serious look at adoption of these technologies is becoming more and more important.

So long WAN Optimization, Hello ISPs
There are a number of reasons WAN technology is and will be kicked to the curb in greater fervency. With bandwidth increases outpacing CPU and custom hardware’s ability to perform deep inspection and optimization, and with ISPs helping to circumvent the cost and complexities associated with WAN accelerators, WAN optimization will only see the light of tomorrow in unique use cases where the rewards outweigh the risks. As most of us will admit, WAN accelerators are expensive and complicated, making ISPs more and more attractive. Their future living inside our networks is certainly bright.

Farewell L4 Firewalling 
With the mass of applications and services moving towards web-based deployment, using Layer 4 (L4) firewalls to block these services entirely will not be tolerated. A firewall incapable of performing deep packet analysis and understanding the nature of the traffic at the Layer 7 (L7), or the application layer, will not satisfy the level of granularity and flexibility that most network administrators should offer their users. On this front, change is clearly inevitable for us network professional, whether it means added network complexity and adapting to new infrastructures or simply letting withering technologies go.

Preparing to Manage the Networks of Tomorrow  

So, what can we do to prepare to monitor and manage the networks of tomorrow? Consider the following:

Understand the “who, what, why and where” of IoT, BYOD and BYOA
Connected devices cannot be ignored. According to 451 Research, mobile Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections will increase to 908 million in just five years, this compared to 252 million just last year. This staggering statistic should prompt you to start creating a plan of action on how you will manage nearly four times the number of devices infiltrating your networks today.

Your strategy can either aim to manage these devices within the network or set an organizational policy to regulate traffic altogether. Nonprofit IT trade association CompTIA noted in a recent survey, many companies are trying to implement partial and even zero BYOD policies to regulate security and bandwidth issues. Even though policies may seem like an easy fix, curbing all of tomorrow’s BYOD/BYOA is nearly impossible. As such, you will have to understand your network device traffic in incremental metrics in order to optimize and secure them. Even more so, you will need to understand network segments that aren’t even in your direct control, like the tablets, phablets and Fitbits, to properly isolate issues.

Know the ins and outs of the new mainstream 
As stated earlier, SDN, NFV and IPv6 will become the new mainstream. We can start preparing for these technologies’ future takeovers by taking a hybrid approach to our infrastructures today. This will put us ahead of the game with an understanding of how these technologies work, the new complexities they create and how they will ultimately affect configuration management and troubleshooting ahead of mainstream deployment.

Start comparison shopping now
Going through the exercise of evaluating ISPs, virtualized network options and other on-the-horizon technologies—even if you don’t intend to switch right now—will help you nail down your particular requirements. Sometimes, knowing a vendor has or works with technology you don’t need right now, such as IPv6, but might later can and should influence on your decision.

Brick in, brick out
Taking on new technologies can feel overwhelming to those of us with “boots on the ground” because the new technology can often simply seem like one more mouth to feed, so to speak. As much as possible, look for ways that potential new additions will not just enhance, but replace the old guard. Maybe your new real-time deep packet inspection won’t completely replace L4 firewalls, but if it can reduce them significantly—while at the same time increasing insight and the ability to respond intelligently to issues—then the net result should be a better day for you. If you don’t do this, then more times than not, new technology will indeed simply seem to increase workload and do little else. This is also a great measuring stick to identify new technologies whose time may not yet have truly come just yet, at least not for your organization.

At a more basic layer, if you have to replace three broken devices and you realize that the newer equipment is far more manageable or has more useful features, consider replacing the entire fleet of old technology even if it hasn’t fallen apart yet. The benefits of consistency often far outweigh the initial pain of sticker shock.


To conclude this series, my opening statement from part one merits repeating: learn from the past, live in the present and prepare for the future. The evolution of networking waits for no one. Don’t be left behind.

About the Author 

 Leon Adato is a Head Geek and technical evangelist at SolarWinds, and is a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), MCSE and SolarWinds Certified Professional (he was once a customer, after all). Before he was a SolarWinds Head Geek, Adato was a SolarWinds® user for over a decade. His expertise in IT began in 1989 and has led him through roles as a classroom instructor, courseware designer, desktop support tech, server support engineer, and software distribution expert. His career includes key roles at Rockwell Automation®, Nestle, PNC, and CardinalHealth providing server standardization, support, and network management and monitoring.

About SolarWinds 
SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500® enterprises to small businesses. In all of our market areas, our approach is consistent. We focus exclusively on IT Pros and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. http://www.solarwinds.com/

Got an idea for a Blueprint column?  We welcome your ideas on next gen network architecture.
See our guidelines.

Read More

SolarWinds Acquires Librato for Cloud Monitoring

SolarWinds, which specializes in IT performance management solutions, has acquired Librato, a San Francisco-based cloud monitoring company, for a cash purchase price of $40 million.

Librato currently enables full-stack performance monitoring of infrastructure and applications on public clouds such as AWS and Heroku, or in a company’s own data centers using a rich set of OSS data collection agents and instrumentation libraries for a variety of technologies and languages such as StatsD, collectd, Rails, Ruby, Python, Node.js and Java. Librato also offers the unique ability to monitor and alert on unlimited metrics from hundreds of sources with second precision, correlate and analyze them to produce actionable results.

Solarwinds, which acquire Pingdom for its website monitoring service in 2014, said this latest acquisition will expand its solutions for monitoring and managing cloud-based applications and infrastructure. SolarWinds plans to bring these companies, Pingdom and Librato, under a new brand, SolarWinds Cloud, for providing visibility from the “outside in” (Web Performance Management) and the “inside out” (Cloud Infrastructure Management).

“As we evaluate the growth of the business-critical application, we see three ‘horizons’ of application deployment that require robust performance management – on-premise IT, IT as a Service, and IT in the Cloud,” said Kevin Thompson, president and CEO, SolarWinds. “We expect that the requirement to manage existing on-premise infrastructure will continue, but will now be coupled with the need to manage the performance of infrastructure and applications either fully or partially deployed in private and public clouds. As more and more businesses move aspects of their environments to Cloud-based deployment models, we believe we are the right company, with the right product set, to help manage infrastructure performance.”

http://www.librato.com
http://www.solarwinds.com

Read More