Flowmon for AWS

Overview

Use Flowmon for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to monitor your cloud infrastructure. As a network administrator or security engineer, you can:

• Control bandwidth use
• Optimize network and application performance
• Reduce troubleshooting time
• Protect against modern cybersecurity threats

Key features:

• Available in the AWS Marketplace
• Runs as an AWS Virtual Machine Instance
• Collects and generates flow data
• Supports dynamic instance resizing for cost optimization
• Gives you full control of updates, backups, and configuration

Operating modes

Flowmon for AWS works in three modes:

• Probe
• Collector
• Collector and Probe

Flowmon Probe mode

In Probe mode, your virtual appliance:

• Accepts mirrored traffic on monitoring ports
• Exports flow data to one or more remote Flowmon Collector instances
• Monitors traffic from supported network sources
• Works with Amazon Virtual Private Cloud traffic mirroring

Flowmon Collector mode

In Collector mode, your virtual appliance:

• Accepts flow data from external sources on management ports
• Works with all supported Network Flows Source Types
• For AWS-specific flow sources, see Amazon VPC Flow Logs

Flowmon Collector and Probe mode

In Collector and Probe mode, your virtual appliance:

• Acts as both a Flowmon Probe and a Flowmon Collector
• Sends data from the Probe to the locally running Collector

Licensing

Flowmon for AWS is a virtual appliance with Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) and AWS Free Trial support.

With BYOL, you can apply for a Free Trial License at progress.com. We recommend this approach.

With an AWS Free Trial, customers can try one instance of this appliance for 30 days. There are no hourly software charges for that instance but AWS infrastructure charges still apply. An AWS Free Trial automatically converts to a paid hourly subscription upon expiration.

Select the licensing scheme appropriate for your use case and requirements. When in doubt, select the BYOL appliance and request a Free Trial License from progress.com.

For support or inquiries, see our contact information.

AWS Marketplace

Flowmon for AWS is available as a Virtual Appliance (VA) in the AWS Marketplace.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you must have the following:

1. A web browser compatible with the AWS Console.
2. A trial license from progress.com.
3. An active AWS user account with a subscription (free or paid). To properly evaluate all features of Flowmon for AWS, a paid subscription is required.

Deployment

To deploy Flowmon for AWS:

1. Log in to the AWS Management Console.

2. Go to the EC2 Dashboard.

3. Click Launch Instance.

4. In the Launch Instance Wizard, assign a name and add tags to help manage and identify your instance.

5. Select the Flowmon Appliance:

   • Click Browse more AMIs under the Application and OS Images (Amazon Machine Image) section.
   • In the Browse AMIs window, switch to the AWS Marketplace AMIs tab. In the search bar, type "Flowmon" and press Enter.
   • Select the appropriate version of Flowmon for AWS based on your requirements and licensing limitations. When in doubt, select the most recent version available with the BYOL Software Pricing Plan.
   • If prompted, click Subscribe and follow the instructions to subscribe to the appliance. Once subscribed, return to the Launch Instance Wizard.

6. Choose an instance type that matches your sizing and budgetary requirements. We recommend using Nitro-based instance type.

7. Configure the Key Pair (login):

   • Select an existing key pair or create a new one to enable SSH access to the instance.
   • Download and securely store the private key file if creating a new key pair because it will not be available for download later.

8. Configure the Network Settings:

   • Select the appropriate VPC and subnet for your deployment.
   • Enable Auto-assign Public IP if required.

9. Configure the security group:

   • Allow SSH and HTTP/HTTPS access from trusted IP ranges.
   • Add rules for UDP traffic on port 4789 for mirrored traffic over VxLAN if using monitoring interfaces.

10. Add storage:

• Ensure the root volume size meets the minimum requirements.
• Add a separate data volume of at least 500 GB for optimal performance.
• In the Advanced Settings, locate the Delete on Termination dropdown for the data volume and set it to No for production systems.

11. Review the instance configuration and click Launch instance.

12. Wait for the launched instance to be Running.

Virtual Disks

Once the new instance is running, you may provision additional data storage if you have not already done that during the initial deployment process. It is recommended to store flow data on a disk other than the OS disk automatically provided with the instance. Adjust the disk capacity based on your license. For more information about the data migration, refer to the User Guide.

Virtual network interfaces

By default, virtual machine instances in AWS EC2 are created with a single virtual network interface. To fully use the deployed appliance (to use it as a Probe in addition to a Collector) you must add at least one additional virtual network interface. In total, the appliance supports four virtual network interfaces (two for management and two for monitoring). The following steps outline the basic configuration. These steps may need to be adjusted for your deployment and use case.

Create a virtual network interface in the VPC and subnet used for traffic mirroring. This interface will be your Mirror Target when you configure Amazon VPC Traffic Mirroring. The security group should allow incoming UDP traffic on port 4789 from the mirrored subnet.

Flowmon Configuration

Refer to Post-installation Steps for details.