Flowmon for Google Cloud

Overview

Use Flowmon for Google Cloud 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 Google Cloud Marketplace
• Runs as a Google Cloud Compute 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 Google Cloud 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 Google Cloud Virtual Private Cloud packet mirroring

Flowmon Collector mode

In Collector mode, your virtual appliance:

• Accepts flow data from external sources on management ports
• Works with all supported network flow types
• Processes Google Cloud VPC flow logs

Flowmon Collector and Probe mode

In Collector and Probe mode, your virtual appliance:

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

For configuration details, refer to the official Flowmon User Guide.

Licensing

Flowmon for Google Cloud is a virtual appliance with Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) support.

With BYOL, you can apply for a Free Trial License at progress.com.

For support or inquiries, see our contact information.

Google Cloud Marketplace

Flowmon for Google Cloud is available as a Virtual Appliance (VA) in Google Cloud Marketplace.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you must have the following:

• A web browser compatible with the Google Cloud Marketplace page.
• A trial license from progress.com.
• An active Google Cloud project with a billing account associated with it. Google Cloud's Free Trial credit is supported.

Deployment

To deploy Flowmon for Google Cloud, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Google Cloud Console.

2. Go to the Google Cloud Marketplace page for Flowmon.

3. Click Launch on Compute Engine.

4. You will be presented with a deployment configuration/overview page.

5. Adjust the properties of the deployment. Pay special attention to Boot Disk size and Networking.

The minimum Boot Disk size is 40 (in GB). You will be able to add a second disk suitable for your storage requirements later (refer to the Virtual Disks section for further details). The minimum number of Network Interfaces is 1 (for a management port). The maximum number is 4 (for an additional management interface or monitoring ports used for the built-in Flowmon Probe). Every interface must be assigned to a different VPC with a non-overlapping subnet addressing scheme. The first interface will have an Ephemeral Public IP address automatically assigned during deployment.

6. Click Deploy.

7. You will be presented with the deployment status overview and further instructions.

8. Google Cloud's Deployment Manager will notify you once the deployment has finished. Follow the on-screen instructions and log in to your running instance. Pay attention to the Admin URL, Admin user, and Admin password.

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.

Flowmon Configuration

Refer to the following section for details: Post-installation Steps