Flowmon for VMware

Overview

Use Flowmon for VMware to monitor your 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:

• Runs as a virtual appliance in VMware environments
• Collects and generates flow data
• Gives you full control of updates, backups, and configuration

This guide describes the deployment procedure of Flowmon for VMware using an OVF template with a set of VMDK disk images. You can change the predefined storage capacity later to match the purchased license.

Operating modes

Flowmon for VMware 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 Flowmon Collector instances
• Monitors traffic from supported network sources
• Monitors traffic on local virtual switches using VMware mirroring

For further details on supported VMware traffic mirroring solutions, refer to the following sections:

• VMware vSwitch Monitoring
• VMware Distributed vSwitch Monitoring
• VMware Dedicated Port Monitoring

Flowmon Collector mode

In Collector mode, your virtual appliance:

• Accepts flow data from external probes, network devices, or cloud services
• Works with all supported Network Flows Source Types

For details on supported flow sources and formats, refer to the official Flowmon User Guide.

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 VMware is a virtual appliance using the Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) licensing model.

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

For support or inquiries, go to the following page: contact information.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you must have the following:

• VMware ESXi 5.5 (or newer) and VMware vSphere (demonstrated on vSphere v6.7).
• Flowmon for VMware downloaded from the Flowmon Downloads page. Archives for download are located in Flowmon Platform / <FlowmonVersion> / Flowmon for VMware. Unless directed otherwise, pick the latest stable version with the desired set of modules.
• A valid Flowmon license or a trial license from progress.com.

Deployment

To deploy Flowmon for VMware, follow these steps:

1. Decompress the downloaded zip file containing all the files necessary for installation.

2. In your vSphere Client, in the VMs and Templates tab, right-click your Datacenter and click Deploy OVF Template.

3. Select all the files from the decompressed zip archive (.ovf and .vmdk) and click Next.

4. Enter a Virtual machine name and select a Location for your new virtual appliance and click Next.

5. Select a compute resource and click Next.

6. Review the details and click Next.

7. Select where you want to store the configuration and disk files. After that, select Thin Provision or Thick Provision according to your preferences and click Next.

8. Select the networks to be used by the virtual appliance. Choose the VMXNET3 network adapter type. The management ports are used to access the web interface. Connect these to your LAN. Then, click Next.

9. Review all the information and click Finish button to start the deployment process. It may take several minutes.

10. Find the newly-created Flowmon virtual appliance and click Power On in the Actions / Power menu. Wait for the appliance to start.

Virtual Disks

Once the new instance is running, you can provision additional data storage. After attaching an additional disk following this guide, refer to the Data Storage section of the Post-installation Steps to activate it.

To attach an additional/replacement disk for data, you must:

1. Open the vSphere Client, select your Flowmon instance, click Actions, and click Edit Settings.

2. Click Add New Device and click Hard Disk.

3. Set the disk size.

4. Check the settings and click OK.

Memory ballooning

VMware memory ballooning is a memory management technique that allows the hypervisor to reclaim memory from virtual machines when the host is under memory pressure. Ballooning can affect the performance of your virtual appliance because it reduces the amount of memory available to the guest operating system. To maintain optimal performance, ensure that ballooned memory remains as low as possible. If ballooning exceeds 20% of the total memory, you receive a notification through the notification bell.

Flowmon Configuration

Refer to the following section: Post-installation Steps.