Earlier this month, I was honoured to have been able to present at the London VMware User Group. My session focussed on a discussion and demonstration around how we can leverage VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) to visualise applications, their dependencies, and their application traffic flows to effectively micro-segment an application using the VMware NSX-T Distributed Firewall (DFW).
As the holiday season is almost upon us (just two days), why not finish with one final article in my vRNI series and an article that will likely finalise my blog posts for the year.
In my previous article (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 5 – Data Flow Analysis & Micro-Segmentation), we analysed collected data flows in vRNI to manually micro-segment an application utilising the VMware NSX-T Distributed Firewall (DFW). However, what if we want to automate this process? After all, applications that require a small number of firewall rules (such as the application used in the previous article) are rare.
This article looks at Martijn Smit‘s great script, which imports vRNI recommended firewall rules into VMware NSX-T Data Center via a Python script.
In the previous articles of this series, we covered the installation (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 1 – Installation) and configuration (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 2 – Configuration) of vRealize Network Insight, before integrating vRNI with Microsoft Active Directory via LDAP (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 3 – Identity & Access Management via LDAP).
In the most recent article (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 4 – Application Discovery), we delved into application discovery. We defined four applications via several options – manual creation of an application, as well as automated discovery based on vSphere Tags/Custom Attributes and VM naming conventions.
In this final article of the series, we will explore and analyse the collected data flows of one of the previously defined applications. The goal here is to identify all valid traffic flows required to secure the application utilising the NSX-T Distributed Firewall (DFW). My friends, today we look at micro-segmentation.
In the previous articles in this series, we covered the installation (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 1 – Installation) and configuration (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 2 – Configuration) of vRealize Network Insight, before integrating vRNI with Microsoft Active Directory via LDAP (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 3 – Identity & Access Management via LDAP).
In this article, we will dive a little deeper and begin looking at how we can define our applications and, in Part 5 (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 5 – Data Flow Analysis & Micro-Segmentation), begin analysing the collected data flows to implement micro-segmentation via the NSX-T Distributed Firewall.
Continue reading → VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 4 – Application Discovery
In my previous articles, we installed (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 1 – Installation) and configured (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 2 – Configuration) our VMware vRealize Network Insight infrastructure.
Now that we have the vRNI components in place and happily collecting data, we’re going to take a quick detour and configure LDAP, enabling our users to log in using their domain credentials instead of the single local@admin user.
In my last vRealize Network Insight article (VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 1 – Installation) we covered the initial installation of the on-premises Platform and Proxy/Collector appliances.
Following on from the installation we will begin looking at how we actually add data sources to vRNI in readiness for application discovery and data flow analysis.
In this article, we will add a vCenter Server and an NSX-T Manager.
Continue reading → VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 2 – Configuration
In a nutshell, vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It enables customers to build an optimised, highly-available, and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks, and provides operational views to manage and scale the VMware NSX deployments.
Continue reading → VMware vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) – Part 1 – Installation
