Virtual Insights with CloudLens: European ISP Extends Visibility into Virtualized Infrastructure
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Virtual Private Cloud
- Wearables - Virtual Reality Glasses, Headsets & Controllers
Applicable Industries
- Glass
- National Security & Defense
Use Cases
- Traffic Monitoring
- Transportation Simulation
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
The Customer
Proximus
About The Customer
Proximus is the largest internet service provider (ISP) in Belgium. In 2018, the company launched its network function virtualization (NFV) initiative, deploying various telecommunication applications using a cloud infrastructure. This included virtual IP multimedia subsystems (vIMS) and software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN). The migration from complex physical ISP networks to a new network with virtualized functions was a long-term project, taking several years. During this transition, Proximus faced the challenge of maintaining the same visibility and analytics across both physical and virtual functions. The company was also driven by the need to contain the total cost of ownership while preserving their investments in existing monitoring and security tools.
The Challenge
Proximus, the largest internet service provider (ISP) in Belgium, embarked on a network function virtualization (NFV) initiative in 2018. The project involved deploying various telecommunication applications using a cloud infrastructure, including virtual IP multimedia subsystems (vIMS), and software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN). However, migrating complex physical ISP networks to a new network with virtualized functions was a long-term project, taking several years. During this transition, Proximus faced the challenge of maintaining the same visibility and analytics across both physical and virtual functions. The company had deployed several traffic analytics probes that relied on physical taps, tap aggregation switches, and Keysight Vision network packet brokers in the legacy environment. However, in the new virtual environment, network functions ran as virtual machines (VMs) on the same physical server, and the east-west traffic did not cross any of the physical links where the physical taps would have been located. Proximus needed to maintain the same level of visibility in the virtual environment as in the physical one, while also containing the total cost of ownership.
The Solution
Proximus addressed these challenges by deploying Keysight CloudLens, a visibility solution for virtualized environments. One of the key components of this solution, CloudLens vTap, offers virtual tapping and filtering capabilities. This enabled Proximus to capture traffic from the virtualized environment that previously fell into a blind spot and forward it to the right destination. Proximus did not need to change their current processes for support, monitoring, and security. The end-to-end reporting remained the same using a single platform, regardless of the origin of the traffic, be it physical or virtual. Proximus deployed Open vSwitch software and CloudLens vTap to mirror the network traffic at the virtual workload or virtual switch level. The virtual taps were deployed to the monitored hosts and managed from the CloudLens management server (CLMS), which administers the virtual taps and packet capture policies. The VisionONE network packet broker sanitized the mirrored network traffic between the virtualized functions via a generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnel to third-party monitoring and security tools.
Operational Impact
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