Cisco Cisco Extensible Network Controller (XNC) Version 1.5 Data Sheet

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Data Sheet

Cisco Nexus Data Broker

Product Overview

You used to monitor traffic mainly to manage network operations. Today, when you monitor traffic you can find out

instantly what is happening throughout your entire data center. And you can use this information to immediately

engage your customers and increase your business advantage. But you need the right data broker software. Cisco

Nexus

Data Broker provides the features that a modern solution needs.

Monitor Network Traffic to Gain Business Advantage

Every enterprise depends on the smooth running of its business applications and the underlying infrastructure.

Visibility into application traffic has traditionally been important for infrastructure operations to maintain security,

resolve problems, and perform resource planning. Now, however, as a result of technological advances and the

ubiquity of the Internet, organizations increasingly are seeking not just visibility but real-time feedback about their

business systems to more effectively engage their customers. Essentially, traffic monitoring is evolving from a tool

to manage network operations to a tool for achieving smart business agility that can materially affect the revenue of

the business. In addition to out-of-band traffic monitoring, migration to 40 or 100 Gbps in aggregation and core

network infrastructure is presenting new challenges for inline traffic monitoring at the perimeter of the network.

Using Cisco Nexus Data Broker and Cisco Nexus switches, Cisco provides a new software-defined approach for

monitoring both out-of-band and inline network traffic.

Scalable TAP and SPAN Aggregation with Cisco Nexus Data Broker

Cisco Nexus Data Broker (Figure 1) is a simple, scalable, and cost-effective solution for enterprise customers who

need to monitor higher-volume and business-critical traffic. It replaces traditional purpose-built matrix switches with

one or more Cisco Nexus 3000 or 9000 Series Switches that you can interconnect to build a scalable network test

access port (TAP) and Cisco

Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) aggregation infrastructure that supports 1, 10, 40,

and 100 Gbps. And you can dedicate ports both for TAP and SPAN and for traditional Ethernet connectivity.

Traffic is tapped into this bank of switches in the same manner as in a matrix network. However, because the data

broker lets you interconnect the Cisco Nexus switches to build a scalable TAP and SPAN aggregation

infrastructure, you can use a combination of TAP and SPAN sources to bring the copy of the production traffic to

this infrastructure. You also can distribute these TAP and SPAN sources and traffic monitoring and analysis tools

across multiple Cisco Nexus switches. The monitoring and analysis tools can be based in physical appliances or

virtual machines. Figure 1 shows the centralized deployment architecture that the data broker supports.