Load Balancing

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Load Balancing

Load Balancing

Load Balancers relieve overloaded monitoring tools by distributing traffic, by flow, to multiple replicated tools working in parallel. Tool replication enables you to increase the throughput of your security and performance monitoring by factors of 2, 3, 4, or more without incurring the CAPEX, integration, and learning-curve costs of acquiring new, unfamiliar tools. The complete line of Net Optics devices with load balancing functionality encompass solutions for all topologies of monitoring load balancing including:

Out-of-band, as with traffic recorders and intrusion detection systems (IDS)
Inline, as with intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and next-generation firewalls
Tool sharing, where multiple independent links can share a load-balanced pool of inline tools

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xBalancer - Load Balancer for 10G networks

P/N: XF-2XB,XF-2XB-DC,XF-2PWRAC,XF-2PWRDC,XF-2FAN

xBalancer is a purpose-built hardware load balancer designed to share network-monitoring devices across multiple links and solve oversubscription.

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xStream 40

P/N: XF-40, XF-40-DC

Net Optics xStream™ 40 product family provides comprehensive Network Packet Brokering for 40G networks, delivering filtering, aggregation, load-balancing, time stamping and more.

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Director xStream Pro - Network Controller Switch

P/N: DIR-2400XP,DIR-2400XP-DC

Director xStream Pro is engineered with sixteen standard ports plus eight ProPorts™ sharing the same non-blocking switching fabric. The ProPorts are smart ports that provide True Timestamping, Dynamic Load Balancing, Deep Packet Inspection, and other intelligent capabilities.

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Director xStream - Data Monitoring Switch

P/N: XF-2DIR, XF-2DIR-DC, XF-2PWRAC, XF-2PWRDC, XF-2FAN

Net Optics Director xStream is a 10 Gigabit monitoring access solution that provides regeneration, aggregation, and smart filtering on a single device.

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Director Pro - Network Packet Broker and Monitoring Access Switch

P/N: DIR-6400P, DIR-3400P, DIR-6400P-DC, DIR-3400P-DC, DIR-PWRAC, DIR-PWRDC

Net Optics Director Pro is an advanced Network Packet Broker (NPB) and network controller switch that aggregates, filters and load balances network traffic sent to network monitoring, security and management tools.

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Director - Network Packet Broker and Monitoring Access Switch

P/N: DIR-3400, DIR-5400, DIR-7400, DIR-3400-DC, DIR-5400-DC, DIR-7400-DC

Net Optics Director is an advanced Network Packet Broker (NPB) and monitoring access switch that directs and load balances traffic by customizable filters to specific security, monitoring and management tools across the network.

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Load Balancing Feature Comparison

	Director	Director Pro	Director xStream	Director xStream Pro	xBalancer
Static
Dynamic
DPI
Expandable
Heartbeat
Link-state Aware
N+M Reduncy
Device Failover

Throughput Feature Comparison

	Director	Director Pro	Director xStream	Director xStream Pro	xBalancer
Backplane	68G, 108G, 148G	68G, 128G	480G	240G	480G
Max Load Balance Output Ports	34 x 1G	34 x 1G static 15 x 1G dynamic	24x 10G	15 x 10G	24 x 10G

Deployment Feature Comparison

	Director	Director Pro	Director xStream	Director xStream Pro	xBalancer
Out-of-band
Inline
Tool sharing

Static Load Balancing

Net Optics Load Balancers with Static Load Balancing utilize algorithms that distribute traffic based strictly on a fixed set of rules relating to characteristics of the input traffic.

Dynamic Load Balancing

Net Optics Load Balancers with Dynamic Load Balancing, actively monitor load levels directed to output ports and adjusts traffic distribution in real time to keep loads even.

Backplane

Using the IP network as a backplane promotes openness, flexibility and scalability. Processing entities can be located anywhere in the IP network and identified by their IP addresses. Transmission of data between two processing entities is simply the transmission of data between two IP addresses. Without restrictions of traditional backplanes, Service Providers and Telcos can scale up with the market, to provide higher data throughput and to offer ever-improving, converging voice, video and data services. Indicates bandwidth available such that even if the first half of the ports are talking to the second half of the switch ports, the fabric can switch them all concurrently without additional buffering/latency.

Maximum Output & Number of interfaces

Net Optics offers a variety of port densities and feature-sets in its load balancing solutions. To determine the best choice for your network architecture please contact us at 1-408-777-7773

Deep Packet Inspection(DPI)

DPI extends filtering capabilities beyond the conventional L2-L4 header information, and deeper into L5-L7 headers and the entire packet payload. The hardware DPI engine lets you explore deeper into the packet, examining every bit of every packet at full wire speed up to 10Gbps for Director Pro or 4x10G for Director xStream Pro Now you can search and identify application headers or text-based content for enhanced security and troubleshooting.

Out-of-Band Load Balancing

When an out-of-band tool becomes oversubscribed, load balancing avoids overburdening and allows processing of more traffic than a single tool would support to increase monitoring throughput. Load balancing to out-of-band tools, such as traffic recorders, does not run the risk of interfering with the network traffic. For out-of‑band load balancing, the balanced traffic needs to be flow-coherent, accommodate different definitions of flows, and be able to filter select traffic of interest including capabilities to aggregate, redirect, and regenerate data.

Inline Load Balancing

As network volumes increase and network links are upgraded to 10G and beyond, complex inline monitoring devices such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) devices, Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), Database Activity Monitors, (DAMs), Next Generation Firewalls, and Application Performance Management tools are becoming oversubscribed. Because the nature of the functions of the tools require that they are able to block or alter traffic on the network, the actual network traffic has a bidirectional traffic flow, going into the inline tool and back out onto the network. To successfully deploy inline load balancing, load balancers must provide adequate backplane bandwidth, 100% traffic visibility, and be tolerant of inline tool failure.

Expansion

Expansion features are provided via ability to cascade multiple devices together. With this flexibility your network monitoring access capacity can grow with your needs.

Link State Aware

The Link State Awareness feature enables traffic to be redistributed among all active tools when a link goes down or comes back up.

Heartbeat

Some applications require that monitoring persist even if a monitoring tool fails. For example, a typical use of dynamic load balancing is to apply multiple forensic recorders to record all of the traffic on a network link, when a single recorder does not have sufficient bandwidth to handle the job alone. Heartbeat packets allow analysis of attached appliances and reallocation of traffic: If one tool fails, traffic is automatically distributed to remaining tools until the failed tool is repaired and back online. This minimizes loss of monitoring capability in most failure scenarios.

Tool-Sharing

Tool sharing refers to independent links sharing the same pool of inline monitoring devices such as IPSs. This shares the processing power of all attached inline devices among the links. For successful tool sharing, the load balancer must be able to provide 100% traffic visibility, be flow coherent, flexible with different flow definitions, have adequate bandwidth to support future growth, and can provide fault mirroring across inline links.

Enterprise Security & Intrusion Prevention

Use Case #1: Inline load balancing to Intrusion Prevention Systems

An enterprise utilizes an IPS to keep its intranet secure from intruders and malware on the Internet. The IPS is capable of processing 2 Gbps of traffic continuously, but the link traffic has grown beyond this limit. Rather than dropping some traffic or throttling the speed of the traffic, the enterprise wants to increase the IPS processing bandwidth. Considering the high cost of new IPS models along with the learning curve and risks of deploying a different unit, the enterprise realized it would be more cost-effective to purchase a second device identical to their existing IPS and run both in parallel, using a monitoring load balancer to distribute the traffic to the two tools.

VoIP Recording

Use Case #2: Call Center—Out-of-Band Load Balancing to Traffic Recorders

As the volume of VoIP calls handled by a call center increases, it may reach a level that outstrips the capacity of a single traffic recorder. As a result, the call center turned to a load balancing solution that deploys multiple traffic recorders operating in parallel. This application can record all of the calls, as long as two key requirements are met:

For each call, the entire conversation—including both directions of traffic—must wind up on the same traffic recorder, so that it is not necessary to search across multiple recorders to replay a call. Call setup traffic (SIP traffic) must be available on the recorder for all the calls on that recorder.

HIPAA Compliance

Use Case #3: Tool sharing inline load balancing

A healthcare organization’s solution to ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is deployment of a data loss prevention (DLP) device on the network link that connects to the department responsible for electronic health records (EHR). The DLP device is deployed inline on the link, where it monitors traffic for Protected Health Information (PHI) and blocks certain traffic from being transferred on the link.

The DLP solution worked so well that the organization decided to deploy it for the Finance and Human Resources departments as well. A purchase order was generated for two new DLP systems, and the amount of the P.O. was quite large. However, a load balancer could share one DLP among multiple links, so if the DLP had enough processing power to handle the traffic on all three links, no additional DLP device would need to be purchased. The tool-sharing capability of the load balancer shared the processing power of the single attached DLP device among the three links.

Case Study: Net Optics xBalancer Delivers a High-Volume 10G Access and Load-Balancing Solution to a Global Online Coupon Leader

Read more to see how xBalancer provides robust capabilities for handling the challenges of heavy traffic, large payload packets and ultra-high bandwidth demands. In this case study you will learn how a Net Optics customer who also happens to be a global leader in digital coupons currently...

Best Practices Guide: Command Today's Complex Data Center Challenges

Rapid evolution of the data center is creating boundless new opportunities, but along with those come urgent monitoring and management challenges—multiple devices from many vendors, proliferating threats, soaring costs, scalability needs, 10G/40G/100G transition, environmental and...

White Paper: Net Optics Load Balancing Solutions

This paper discusses performance with your monitoring and secuirty tools. Are you getting the best performance from your monitoring and security tools—or is oversubscription causing them to drop packets and miss messages? Today’s skyrocketing traffic and high-speed 10 Gbps links put...

Case Study: xBalancer Helps a Global Cloud Provider Maintain Uninterrupted Security and Streamline Traffic Monitoring While Scaling to 10G

A Global Cloud Provider was understandably worried that its current tools wouldn’t be able to handle the increased traffic caused by upgrading from 1G to 10G. Such intensive pressures threaten to overwhelm and limit the effectiveness of the very devices that carry out the monitoring....

Case Study: xBalancer Helps a Global Cloud Provider Maintain Uninterrupted Security and Streamline Traffic Monitoring

Company relies on xBalancer to load balance and prevent overburdening of monitoring tools,while enabling tools to be added quickly and cost-efficiently in an intensive, high-demand environment

Global Cloud Provider’s Upgrade Triggers the Urgent Need for Load-Balancing...

White Paper: Static Load Balancing Implemented with Filters

The purpose of load balancing in a network traffic monitoring context is to distribute traffic evenly among a number of monitoring tools in order to process more traffic than a single tool can support. Static load balancing refers to load balancing algorithms that distributes the traffic based...

White Paper: Monitoring Load Balancing in the 10G Arena: Strategies and Requirements for Solving Performance Challenges

Load Balancing—A Proven Method for Enhancing Performance. Many network architects and monitoring tool providers are addressing network performance challenges by using load balancing techniques. Load balancing is a well-understood technology that has been used in the past to distribute...

What is a Network Monitoring Load Balancer

Load balancing can be a cost-effective solution for dealing with monitoring tool oversubscription due to growing traffic speeds and volumes. Replication of existing tools such as traffic recorders and IPSs can be less costly than upgrading to higher performance tools, and the hidden expenses of deploying unfamiliar new gear and retraining staff should not be overlooked. Load balancing is a mature, well-understood technology, and load balancers network monitoring load balancers are purpose-built to meet the special requirements of monitoring traffic. These devices offer 100 percent traffic visibility, flow coherence, and tool sharing capabilities. For organizations facing monitoring challenges as they upgrade data centers to 10G and faster technologies, monitoring load balancing is a solution well worth investigating. Load balancing can be both dynamic and static: Dynamic Load Balancing responds to traffic fluctuations, while Static Load Balancing enables you to pre-configure traffic flow based on historical data or current requirements

What is the difference between Static and Dynamic Load Balancing?

Static Load Balancing

Static load balancing refers to those load balancing algorithms that distribute traffic based strictly on a fixed and pre-configured set of rules relating to characteristics of the input traffic.

Dynamic Load Balancing

Dynamic Load Balancing actively monitors load levels on output channels and adjusts traffic distribution in real time to keep loads even.

What is Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)?

Deep Packet Inspection is the ability to apply filters to a packet or multiple packets at any location, regardless of packet length or the location of the data to be matched within this packet. By applying filters based on DPI to traffic sent to a monitoring tool you are able to capture just the traffic of interest.

What is flow coherency?

Flow coherency ensures complete two-way conversations are directed to the same monitoring tool— meaning that traffic flows are kept together on the same monitoring tool. Flows are typically defined by a 5-tuple of header fields in the packets, the 5-tuple being source and destination IP addresses and ports, and the protocol. Packets with the same 5-tuple value are all routed to the same tool, ensuring that entire flows are monitored or recorded on a single tool.

What is Link-State Awareness?

Link State Awareness, when enabled, means that load balancing will react to the link status of a sensor port. For high-availability in inline load balancing applications, a solution such as xBalancer™ can constantly monitor the links attached to the tools. If any links go down, xBalancer reallocates traffic away from the down tools and distributes it among the remaining up tools. When a down tool comes back online, traffic resumes being allocated to it. When traffic reallocation happens, flows that are not being switched are not affected.

What is a heartbeat packet?

Heartbeat packets are a method of by which the load balancer becomes aware that an attached IPS lost power or had any other type of failure. The load balancer sends heartbeat packets through attached IPSs to continuously validate that the IPSs are passing traffic—the same technique used by bypass switches. If an IPS fails, the load balancer automatically takes the traffic that was bound to that IPS and redistributes it to the remaining active IPSs. When the failed IPS comes back online, the load balancer returns the traffic to it. Another possible mode of dealing with IPS failures that may be offered by some monitoring load balancers is a port loopback mode. In this situation, traffic simply bypasses a failed IPS as if that IPS were connected through a bypass switch. Yet another mod is N+M tool redundancy where one or more warm-standby IPSs are designated.

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