Announcing VMware Aria Operations for Networks 6.9

Multi-Cloud relies on interconnections. Networks become more complex with more interconnections. One of our strategies is to develop functionality in a world where connections to as many vendors and especially the infrastructure our customers have and rely on is vital. The latest release of VMware Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight) 6.9 has application visibility features for the virtual machines (VM) and Kubernetes containers traffic with the infrastructure integrations our customers’ operations and security teams need to run. The new integrations with other 3rd party infrastructure help teams that use the VMware Aria Operations for Networks simplify their infrastructure topology by seeing everything in one place and helping users run their business better with less complexity.

The complete product set is available in VMware Aria Operations for Networks Universal (vRealize Network Insight Universal). There is VMware integration and visibility of VMware NSX, VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi), and many other VMware and 3rd party integrations. The Universal solution allows flexibility for customers to deploy the solution as a SaaS (Software as a Service) or on-premises. For customers who deploy the platform on-premises first, one value of Universal is the flexibility to move from on-premises deployments to a SaaS deployment later when the customer is ready. The VMware Aria SaaS solutions do not use a release number designator, including this release. The SaaS version has all the features of our on-premises 6.9 deployments.

Look at our VMware CTO Kit Colbert’s predictions for 2023 and his strategy “Prediction #2: The industry will coalesce around an early multi-cloud architecture.” The 6.9 release is just one of many components in the overall VMware multi-cloud strategy, where we are helping customers consistently view and troubleshoot their applications that run on-premises or across multiple clouds to achieve their business requirements.

**Figure 1.** VMware CTO Kit Colbert was kind to take a selfie during VMware’s 25th-anniversary event on-site at Palo Alto’s campus on February 8, 2023.

The team is preparing a session proposal on App-centric Network Visibility and Operations for the VMware Explore regional customer events in the upcoming India event on April 11-12, 2023, where the team will share details on this 6.9 release and customer experiences.

For more details on how the solution helps customers run their networks more efficiently and with better time to resolution, look at the Forrester Total Economic Impact study. The study covers information on how a typical composite company can benefit from using VMware Aria Operations for Networks.

**Figure 3.** Forrester TEI (Total Economic Impact) Study on benefits of VMware Aria Operations for Networks to see where your organization could also benefit from using the solution.

**Figure 4.** Look at a Dummies iPaper explaining the benefits of VMware Aria Operations for Networks, especially for the Network Assurance and Verification capability to be more proactive when monitoring infrastructure.

AWS Marketplace now lists VMware Aria Operations for Networks. Customers who have AWS Marketplace funds can purchase VMware Aria Operations for Networks with a private offer.

**Figure 5.** VMware Aria Operations for Networks is available on AWS Marketplace.

Highlights 6.9

Integration with VMware Cloud on AWS (Amazon Web Services) Outposts

The 6.9 release now has visibility and support for VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, which can be added as a data source for traffic to provide metrics and other dashboard information. Customers use VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts as a hybrid solution to run workloads in their private clouds and connect their SDDCs (Software Defined Data Centers) to the rest of their AWS workloads in their Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs).

**Figure 6.** VMware Aria Operations for Networks provides network visibility of VMware Cloud on AWS

Azure Network Security Groups

VMware Aria Operations for Networks visibility of Microsoft Azure Network Security Groups (NSG) now support subnets and interface groups for flow logs for more detailed application information. Microsoft Azure Network Security Groups (NSG) allow or deny traffic based on various characteristics like source and destination addresses, ports, or traffic protocols. This new functionality is for Azure native public cloud scenarios.

Flow-Based Application Discovery integration of F5 load balancers

Visibility integration of F5 load balancers will provide more application and tier details. Now that load balancers are part of the algorithm, the platform can give more information on which virtual machines are part of the same application to help define the application boundaries. Even though a particular traffic flow may go to a specific load balancing pool, all the possible load balancer pools will be considered in determining the application flow.

For all application discovery use cases, there are improvements in how discovered applications are named when using flow-based application discovery. These naming improvements will make it easier for users to name the applications that are discovered. There are new options, such as uploading a .csv file, using regex, and using a pattern builder to name the applications that are discovered.

Palo Alto Firewall enhancements

The 6.9 release shows better visibility of the Palo Alto Networks Firewall local device policies on the dashboards. Users with this enhancement will be able to view and query the locally defined policies on the firewall devices with better visibility of the routing and VM-to-VM path. This will make it easier to determine if the firewall is blocking an application or something else in the infrastructure.

Cisco Catalyst 9000

The 6.9 release provides support for the Cisco Catalyst 9000 series switches with all the switching visibility within VMware Aria Operations for Networks. This includes support for showing the multi-gigabit interfaces and forward and backward paths for traffic flow in network maps.

VMware NSX

There are new enhancements, such as being able to see and troubleshoot incomplete TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) sessions to help applications run better. The VM (Virtual Machine) dashboards can also show a TCP Incomplete Session Count Metric as well as go in-depth on incomplete TCP sessions:

VMware HCX

There is now VM-to-VM path visibility support for VMware HCX environments for underlay and overlay. When VMware HCX users extend their network with the network extension capability, visibility of the traffic path topology will now be available to see instances such as hair pinning of traffic.

Day 2 Operations

When customers use VMware Aria Operations for Networks for application discovery and migration projects, we have added some user prompts to make it easier for the next stage. This is to add more VMware Cloud data sources to further use the platform in Day 2 troubleshooting to improve application performance.

Also, there are improvements to Guided Network Troubleshooting (GNT) which will make it easier to find network anomalies that might affect applications.

Large Screen Display

Large screen support will be available. This capability will be useful for Network Operations Centers (NOC) and other areas to display the topology and other dashboards as a living network diagram. Support for 2560 x 1440 lines of resolution is available. The platform auto-adjusts whether a large or smaller screen is used.

Custom Dashboards

This release is where we will see an evolution to custom dashboards and away from custom pinboards. Users can create their own custom dashboards to display the information they are interested in. What users did with custom pinboards before, the custom dashboard solution will provide more application and network information. Custom Dashboards can display information such as network or infrastructure health and more. The custom dashboards can be easily created by dragging and dropping out-of-the-box widgets the users can select to develop relevant dashboards and further customize what they need to view in the dashboards. When upgrading to 6.9, existing pinboards are converted and saved as custom dashboards. Read the blog on the new Custom Dashboards.

This is just a short list of highlights of 6.9 as there are many more new capabilities in the release that will help customers navigate the multi-cloud environment. Read the technical What’s New 6.9 blog. These features continue to add connectivity and show how VMware cloud management will help customers run their infrastructure and networks more efficiently. There is a lot of value in the VMware Aria Operations for Networks 6.9 release.

If you already have VMware Aria Operations for Networks, take a look at the Forrester Total Economic Impact Study to understand the full benefits of your solution across the use cases. If you do not have VMware Aria Operations for Networks yet, then try the free SaaS trial to get started.