Flowmon for Hyper-V

Overview

Use Flowmon for Hyper-V 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 Microsoft Hyper-V
• Collects and generates flow data
• Gives you full control of updates, backups, and configuration

This guide describes the deployment procedure of Flowmon for Hyper-V using a set of VHDX disk images. You can change the predefined storage capacity later to match the purchased license.

Operating modes

Flowmon for Hyper-V 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

For details about Hyper-V traffic mirroring, see:

• Hyper-V Virtual Switch Port Monitoring
• Hyper-V Network Interface Mirroring

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.

Collector and Probe mode

In Collector and Probe mode, your virtual appliance:

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

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

Licensing

Flowmon for Hyper-V 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, see our contact information.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you must have the following:

• A Hyper-V host with a graphical user interface and Hyper-V Manager installed.
• Flowmon for Hyper-V downloaded from the Flowmon Downloads page. Archives for download are located in Flowmon Platform / <FlowmonVersion> / Flowmon for Hyper-V. 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

For each Flowmon deployment, individual copies of the provided VHDX files are needed. You can reuse the VHDX file to deploy multiple instances.

To deploy Flowmon for Hyper-V, follow these steps:

1. Unzip the archive.

2. In Hyper-V Manager, click Action, go to New and click Virtual Machine.

3. Provide a Name for the virtual machine.

4. Select Generation 2 as the generation of the new virtual machine.

5. Specify the Startup memory.

6. In Configure Networking, select a connection for Flowmon's Management Interface 1.

7. In Connect Virtual Hard Disk, select Use an existing virtual hard disk.

8. Select the first VHDX file.

9. Click Finish.

10. Click Settings on the newly-created virtual machine.

11. If the Secure Boot option is available under the Firmware settings or the Security settings, ensure that Secure Boot is disabled.

12. Add multiple network adapters. Click Add Hardware and add a Network Adapter. For an additional management interface, add one adapter. For two monitoring ports, add two networks adapters.

13. For each new network adapter, select a Virtual switch.

14. For each new network adapter intended for monitoring, click Advanced Features and select Destination as the Mirroring mode.

15. Add the second VHDX file as a hard drive to your SCSI controller. Click SCSI Controller, select Hard Drive, and click Add.

16. Click the newly-created Hard Drive and select the second VHDX file.

Memory ballooning

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.

Flowmon Configuration

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