ExtraHop, Arista Partner to Deliver Persistent Real-Time Visibility for Software-Defined Datacenters

VMworld 2013 US
ExtraHop, leading provider of real-time IT operational intelligence driven by wire data, today announced a strategic technology partnership with Arista Networks and the launch of an integrated solution, the ExtraHop-Arista Persistent Monitoring Architecture. This joint solution is built to accelerate the adoption of software-defined datacenter networking by delivering real-time, cross-tier, and cross-team persistent mobile visibility for dynamic environments. ExtraHop and Arista will be demonstrating the Persistent Monitoring Architecture at the Arista booth #1045 at VMworld, August 25–29, 2013.

“As VMware ushers in a new era of complexity with virtualized networks, businesses are about to find themselves at a critical inflection point. Virtualization may be the way forward, but navigating these waters will be rife with challenges,” said Bernd Harzog, Analyst at The Virtualization Practice. “In order to successfully adopt this new virtualized reality, IT organizations need solutions that enable persistent and continuous automatic discovery and self-correction in the virtualized environment. The ExtraHop-Arista Persistent Monitoring Architecture is the first solution to deliver this comprehensive visibility.”

The ExtraHop-Arista Persistent Monitoring Architecture capitalizes on Data ANalyZer (DANZ) capabilities in the Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS), delivering deep integration that enables IT teams to programmatically direct traffic to ExtraHop’s Context and Correlation Engine (CCE) for persistent mobile visibility derived from real-time IT operations analytics. The joint solution dynamically adapts to changes in the software-defined datacenter, automatically discovering, classifying, and mapping dependencies of all applications and infrastructure and their performance. This functionality is accomplished without the use of agents, delivering persistent L2–L7 visibility across all network, infrastructure, application, and end-user transactions before, during, and after changes are made to the environment. This deep, cross-tier visibility dramatically reduces the risks associated with the continuous provisioning, de-provisioning, and migration of VMs in the datacenter.

The ExtraHop-Arista Persistent Monitoring Architecture includes the following key features:

  • Persistent and continuous auto-discovery of virtual and physical servers and their associated MAC addresses using ExtraHop’s API, ensuring that Arista’s persistent SPAN capabilities maintain their identity regardless of port or VLAN migration
  • Real-time reassembly of full sessions, flows, and transactions, in addition to classification of devices based on ongoing heuristic analysis of MAC addresses, IP addresses, wire protocols, transaction types, and other wire data
  • Seamless, persistent visibility during vMotion events, including the spinning up, spinning down, and migration of virtual machines across the datacenter

“The collaboration between ExtraHop and Arista on this joint solution continues both companies’ commitment to excellence,” said Ed Chapman, Vice President of Business Development and Alliances, Arista Networks. “Paired with ExtraHop’s technology, the DANZ features in Arista EOS are able to provide a seamless and persistent SDN solution that eliminates lack of application visibility within high-stakes virtualized environments.”

“In many ways, virtualization and software-defined datacenters can simplify the management of IT operations. However, many organizations find that when applications are divorced from dedicated infrastructure and the network, traditional approaches to monitoring performance, availability, and security no longer work,” said Jesse Rothstein, CEO, ExtraHop Networks. “Through our partnership with Arista, we’re helping IT teams tackle these challenges. Together, ExtraHop and Arista offer these organizations a solution purpose-built to deliver the persistent visibility they need to reap the full benefits of virtualized, software-defined environments, and we’re doing it at one-tenth the cost of legacy-based offerings.”