Outstanding Network Virtualization Solutions in 2021

Hardware maintenance has always been a major problem that enterprises have had to face. Regular upgrade and maintenance plans, high-cost repairs and replacements, the complexity and high cost of hardware management have prompted many companies to adopt virtualization, or convert computer storage, servers and other network hardware into virtual versions for easier maintenance and deployment on the network.

Network virtualization converts physical network hardware into software, thereby increasing network flexibility and scalability.

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What is Network Virtualization?

Network virtualization focuses on creating a software-based view and management of the network, transforming traditional network hardware into a more flexible and portable software version. The process of creating a virtual network involves separating the management plane of the network from the control plane and combining existing network hardware and software components into a unified software entity. Virtual networks typically retain their hardware to implement problems such as packet forwarding, but all other network functions are performed on the virtual network, completely separated from the previous hardware.

Depending on the goals of an enterprise network and the existing hardware and software, they can choose between three types of network virtualization:

• Internal virtualization: This type of virtualization uses multiple software containers to emulate the behavior of a single network.
• External virtualization: This type of virtualization focuses on combining multiple localized networks into one virtual network to reduce distributed management and improve overall network efficiency.
• Cloud-based virtualization: Cloud-based virtualization looks like both internal and external virtualization, but it uses cloud-based computing resources to create a virtual network.

Excellent Network Virtualization Market Solution

Enterprise Networking Planet, a US technology media, evaluated various network virtualization solutions. The following ranking is in no particular order.

VMware NSX

VMware NSX is considered the industry standard for network virtualization and security, with a focus on bringing networking and security closer to the application and the virtual machines that run it. Many users choose VMware NSX to achieve use cases and enterprise goals such as zero-trust security, multi-cloud networking, network automation, container networking, SDN automation, rapid workload migration and load balancing. In addition to traditional virtual machines, NSX also provides top-notch security and monitoring capabilities for containerized applications and microservices.

feature:

• One-click automatic configuration via a complete L2-L7 stack
• Single pane of glass for public cloud, private cloud, virtual machines, containers, and bare metal
• Network segmentation and micro-segmentation for individual workloads
• Contextual security policies and IDS/IPS for lateral threat mitigation
• Automated configuration and management of network and security services

Pros: Virtualization security features are very strong and numerous, covering end-to-end encryption, micro-segmentation, and end-to-end visibility.

Disadvantages: There are issues with interoperability with external vendors and their products.

Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization

Cisco Enterprise Network Function Virtualization is a Cisco-supported solution for virtual network deployment and ongoing management. Like many other network virtualization solutions, its goal is to simplify localized enterprise operations by reducing hosted hardware and moving network functions to software on x86-based platforms. The product helps enterprise network administrators monitor all network issues while also providing additional resources to orchestrate and manage services, thereby improving incident response speed.

feature:

• Can be deployed on any platform, including virtual platforms, Cisco platforms, and third-party devices
• Enterprise NFV Optimization Platform Improves Deployment Efficiency
• NFVI capabilities include a Linux-based virtualization layer, increasing deployment options for Cisco and third-party VNFs
• Support service chaining, lifecycle management and open API
• Covers network services as software: routing, firewall, application acceleration, and wireless LAN controllers

Pros: Cisco has a strong background in network security and can offer several advanced security features to its NFV customers.

Disadvantages: Some users expressed interest in a modular upgrade product.

FlexiHub

FlexiHub is used more as a third-party support resource, or even as an alternative for businesses that require a lot of mobile hardware maintenance and want to outsource these operations. The solution is particularly powerful for businesses in the service industry, as FlexiHub's core goal involves creating virtual network connections or providing support for customers remote sensor, vehicle or smartphone diagnostics. At the same time, remote maintenance, monitoring and troubleshooting can also be applied to corporate equipment and other hardware.

feature:

• Remote customer support, diagnostics, USB device repair and cross-domain maintenance of industry-specific devices
• Remotely monitor and maintain enterprise equipment
• Ability to redirect corporate USB and COM port devices to any cloud-based virtual machine
• Network administrators can wirelessly connect to customer phones and troubleshoot issues remotely

Pros: Covers IoT devices and data management, and is an advanced third-party service for traditional and mobile enterprise devices.

Cons: Flexihub sometimes fails to recognize the remote device it is trying to connect to.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager does not assist with migration or initial startup of network tools in virtual environments, but the tool does provide strong support in areas such as hypervisor management, virtual machine monitoring, and troubleshooting. Because the software is focused on virtual network performance management, Virtualization Manager is particularly good at providing single-panel data visualization and other analytical customizations, allowing system administrators to better understand the solutions they need. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is often integrated with the SolarWinds Orion Platform, which is a big advantage for users who also need additional storage resource monitoring (SRM), virtualization management (VMAN), and network performance monitoring (NPM).

feature:

• Capacity planning tools
• Virtual Machine Expansion Management
• Predictive recommendations
• Provide management across on-premises, hybrid and cloud infrastructures
• Visibility across your entire application stack

Pros: This SolarWinds product can troubleshoot various enterprise virtualization setups (servers, storage and virtual networks) from a single management pane.

Cons: Many users find the SolarWinds licensing process complex and expensive.

oVirt

oVirt is a free, open source virtualization solution that runs on the KVM hypervisor and is built on community projects such as libvirt, Gluster, PatternFly, and Ansible. The solution is a powerful virtualization management platform for developers who want to customize the source code and collaborate with other developer communities for troubleshooting and optimization. Much like other open source platforms, oVirt provides extensive documentation, communities, forums, and blogs to guide enterprise developers in implementing the oVirt solution.

feature:

• Using KVM hypervisor
• Web-based user interface for administrators and non-administrators
• Integrated management of host, storage and network configuration
• Live migration of virtual machines and disks between hosts and storage
• High availability of virtual machines in the event of host failure

Pros: The product is easy to use and manage, especially for virtualized storage management.

Disadvantages: Although the tool is compatible with products from other vendors, most vendors don't recognize or know how to integrate oVirt solutions.

Vagrant

Vagrant is an open source software developed by HashiCorp. It is specifically used to develop and manage portable virtual software development environments. The main purpose of this product is to simplify software configuration management to improve the efficiency of virtual networks. VirtualBox, KVM, Hyper-V, Docker, VMware, AWS and other mainstream platforms are compatible with the Vagrant development environment.

feature:

• Developers, operations, and designers can work in the same format
• Mirror production environment with identical operating system, packages, users, and test configurations
• Integrate with configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef, Docker, Puppet, and Salt
• Vagrant is available for Mac, Linux, Windows, and most other platforms
• The configuration file describes all software requirements, packages, operating system configuration, and users

Pros: Vagrant provides detailed documentation to explain its features and guide developers and non-developers alike through the deployment process.

Disadvantages: The command line and other initial deployment features in Vagrant are more complicated than similar features in Linux and other tools.

Altaro Virtual Machine Backup

Altaro VM Backup is a popular backup and replication solution designed specifically for virtual machines. Its most powerful feature is data deduplication through enhanced inline deduplication. Altaro VM Backup improves backup efficiency and reduces the required storage space by running deduplication on all backup jobs. The storage space required for virtual networks is significantly reduced, saving enterprises a lot of costs.

feature:

• Single-console management and monitoring of Hyper-V and VMware hosts
• WAN-optimized replication for remote virtual machines
• Continuous VM backup enables data retrieval in case of data loss
• Backup copies of VMs can be stored on multiple offsite servers, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, Wasabi, or an enterprise offsite server
• Archive different backup versions through different backup cycles

Pros: The variety of virtual machine backup options is a great resource for disaster recovery needs.

Cons: File sharing and file-specific backups are a problem for some users.

GigaVUE-VM

In the process of network virtualization, many network administrators are concerned that they will lose the operational visibility they previously had on traditional hardware and software. GigaVUE-VM is Gigamon's primary solution to this problem, providing additional network monitoring and traffic forwarding to external security and monitoring solutions used by the company. Users can both monitor their virtual environment through the GigaVUE-VM interface and continue to use their previous security and monitoring solutions through the forwarding capabilities. GigaVUE-VM is also tightly integrated with VMware NSX and ESX, making it an ideal network visibility solution for VMware users.

feature:

• Improved visibility into VMware virtual networks for VMware ESXi infrastructure and automated VMware NSX environments
• Forward VM network traffic to existing security and monitoring tools
• East-West Traffic Visibility
• Tracking the lateral spread of threats in virtual environments
• Multi-tenant traffic visibility for OpenStack/KVM clouds

Pros: Gigamon functionality is easy to deploy.

Cons: The tool is considered somewhat expensive, especially when compared to open source security alternatives.

Original link: https://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/guides/network-virtualization-software/