Given the benefits cloud computing offers such as security, flexibility, better collaboration, and data modernization, organizations of all shapes and sizes have started moving their workload to this technology. With so many organizations using workarounds to gain visibility and control of bandwidth consumption, and with cloud computing letting organizations access and manage the information, the amount of data being generated is also increasing. But with such easy automation and management, most organizations forget to address what’s really important: monitoring cloud traffic.
Technology has its pros and cons, and cloud computing services (such as Amazon AWS) are no exception. Cloud services have limitations that can cost an organization its reputation and eat up its entire budget. For example:
- Unlike traditional computing that requires hardwired connection, cloud computing relies entirely on the internet. Without good connectivity, users won’t be able to access the required data or application.
- The easy, shared accessibility to an organization’s sensitive data increases the chances of a data breach.
- Manually tracking bandwidth usage and cloud spending poses a major challenge that often leads to overspending.
However, with cloud traffic monitoring tools and strategies in place, you can overcome these challenges. Cloud traffic monitoring and management provides a range of capabilities, from providing visibility to ensure the network’s health and performance is streamlined to reporting on the obtained insights for proactive optimization and security. Although there are many tools to support this, some best practices can help choose an ideal tool.
Best practices to follow while monitoring cloud traffic
Cloud traffic management is significant in ensuring that your network achieves the efficiency that is expected. With these best practices, you can streamline the monitoring process.
- Monitor the entire infrastructure, including hybrid, on-premises, and cloud infrastructures from a centralized dashboard.
- Automate some tasks such as setting thresholds or report generation to focus more on issues that require your intervention.
- Prioritize the most important performance metrics such as throughput, latency, security threats, etc.
To scale along with this dynamic technology and tackle unavoidable challenges requires a traffic monitoring tool that provides visibility into data centers and cloud infrastructure. NetFlow Analyzer provides an edge with cloud traffic monitoring.
Presenting NetFlow Analyzer’s cloud traffic monitoring
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is a full-stack traffic analysis tool that is developed specifically to address the concerns of today’s dynamic hybrid and cloud infrastructure. To make your traffic monitoring easier, NetFlow Analyzer now offers you Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) traffic monitoring to help you manage AWS resources and VPCs in the network.
With Amazon VPC able to mirror the traditional network and provide agility, security, and performance benefits, organizations are rapidly adopting VPC. NetFlow Analyzer collects network flow logs for monitoring Amazon VPC, offering insights into all the critical performance metrics necessary to make your cloud environment efficient and secure against attacks.
With NetFlow Analyzer, you can:
- Monitor, collect, and analyze the flow logs or the IN and OUT traffic of your AWS resources.
- Find complete flow information, including source, destination, IP address, port, and protocol.
- Observe traffic trends over a period, and identify peak hours to see how your network is being accessed.
- See if the policies applied are effective and what traffic is allowed or denied.
- Generate Forensics, Inventory and Search reports for your VPC interfaces, and get in-depth information on everything, including conversations, protocols, TCP flags, etc.
The right time to invest in a cloud traffic monitoring tool!
Cloud computing is expected to grow 14.1% from 2023 to 2030, highlighting how fast enterprises are adopting to these solutions. Let’s see why enterprises seek such cloud traffic monitoring software:
- The reason many enterprises use the cloud is to ensure that their resource-intensive applications run smoothly and to avoid dealing with backend technicalities. But how do you know what the end-user experience is like? How do you isolate the source of faults, and where does monitoring come into play?
- With so many users accessing your services, it is imperative to know how bandwidth is being utilized by every link and application to get holistic visibility into network activity.
- Since cloud computing has higher risks of being exposed to various users, it can involve data leaks or attract attacks such as DoS or DDoS and makes the network inaccessible to the users. Therefore, network anomalies should be reported as soon as they’re detected to protect data.
Choosing the right cloud traffic monitor can make a huge difference to your organization. Investing in your cloud infrastructure’s health and reliability is crucial, which involves getting a solution that can be tailored to your organization’s needs and scales along with it as it grows. Get in touch with our domain experts to see how NetFlow Analyzer can benefit your organization today!
