Configuring the G-vTAP Controllers

A G-vTAP Controller manages multiple G-vTAP agents and orchestrates the flow of mirrored traffic to GigaVUE V Series nodes.

Note:  A single G-vTAP Controller can manage up to 1000 G-vTAP agents. The recommended minimum instance type is Standard_B1s for G-vTAP Controller.

A G-vTAP Controller can only manage G-vTAP agents that has the same version. For example, the G-vTAP Controller v1.3 can only manage G-vTAP agents v1.3. So, if you have G-vTAP agents v1.2 still deployed in the VM machines, you must configure both G-vTAP Controller v1.2 and v1.3.

While configuring the G-vTAP Controllers, you can also specify the tunnel type to be used for carrying the mirrored traffic from the G-vTAP agents to the GigaVUE V Series nodes. The tunnel type can be L2GRE or VXLAN.

To configure the G-vTAP Controllers:

1.   Click Cloud in the top navigation link.
2. Under Azure, click Configuration > G-vTAP Controllers.
3. Click New. The G-vTAP Configuration page is displayed as shown in Figure 1136: Configuring tG-vTAP Controller .

Figure 1136: Configuring tG-vTAP Controller

4. Enter or select the appropriate information as shown in Table 1: Fields for G-vTAP Controller Configuration.

Table 1: Fields for G-vTAP Controller Configuration

Fields

Description

Connection

The name of the Azure connection.

Note:   For shared controller configuration, you must select the required connection for configuring the G-vTAP Controller. Peering must be active in the selected connection to allow the rest of the connections containing the V-series nodes to be monitored.

Authentication Type

Enter the password or SSH Key.

SSH Public Key

Paste in the SSH public key.

Resource Group

Select Create New or Use Existing. To use Existing, select the existing resource group you wish to use.

Disk Type

SSD or HDD (SSD is the default and recommended disk type)

Controller Version(s)

The G-vTAP Controller version you configure must always be the same as the G-vTAP agents’ version number deployed in the VM machines. This is because the G-vTAP Controller v1.2 can only manage G-vTAP agents v1.2. Similarly, the G-vTAP Controller v1.3 can only manage G-vTAP agents v1.3.

If there are multiple versions of G-vTAP agents deployed in the VM machines, then you must configure multiple versions of G-vTAP Controllers that matches the version numbers of the G-vTAP agents.

Note: If there is a version mismatch between G-vTAP controllers and G-vTAP agents, GigaVUE-FM cannot detect the agents in the instances.

To add multiple versions of G-vTAP Controllers:

a. Under Controller Versions, click Add.
b. From the Image drop-down list, select a G-vTAP Controller image that matches with the version number of G-vTAP agents installed in the instances.
c. From the Instance Type down-down list, select an instance type for the G-vTAP Controller. The recommended instance type is t2.micro.

Note: The instance type t2.nano is not supported.

d. In Number of Instances to Launch, specify the number of G-vTAP Controllers to launch. The minimum number you can specify is 1.

Controller Version(s)

(continued)

An older version of G-vTAP Controller can be deleted once all the G-vTAP agents are upgraded to the latest version.

To delete a specific version of G-vTAP Controller, click x (delete) next to its G-vTAP Controller image.

Figure 1137: Delete a G-vTAP Controller Version

Once you delete a G-vTAP Controller image from the G-vTAP Configuration page, all the G-vTAP Controller instances of that version are deleted from Azure.

Management Subnet

Subnet: The subnet that is used for communication between the G-vTAP Controllers and the G-vTAP agents, as well as to communicate with GigaVUE-FM.

This is a required field. Every fabric node (both controllers and the nodes) need a way to talk to each other and FM. So they should share at least one management plane/subnet.

Network Security Groups: The security group created for the G-vTAP Controller. For example, sg_gvtap-controller. For more information, refer to Network Security Groups.

Accelerated Networking: If you select this option, GigaVUE-FM will filter out the supported VM sizes in the list to choose from.

Note: Some instance types support this in Azure platform. Refer to Microsoft documentation to learn which ones are supported.

Additional Subnet(s)

(Optional) If there are G-vTAP agents on subnets that are not IP routable from the management subnet, additional subnets must be specified so that the G-vTAP Controller can communicate with all the G-vTAP agents.

Click Add to specify additional data subnets, if needed. Also, make sure that you specify a list of security groups for each additional subnet.

Tag(s)

(Optional) The key name and value that helps to identify the G-vTAP Controller instances in your Azure environment. For example, you might have G-vTAP Controllers deployed in many regions. To distinguish these G-vTAP Controllers based on the regions, you can provide a name that is easy to identify such as us-west-2-gvtap-controllers. To add a tag:

a. Click Add.
b. In the Key field, enter the key. For example, enter Name.
c. In the Value field, enter the key value. For example, us-west-2-gvtap-controllers.

When the G-vTAP Controllers are launched in the VNet, they appear as shown in Figure 1138: G-vTAP Controllers with Custom Tag Name:

Figure 1138: G-vTAP Controllers with Custom Tag Name

Use Public IP

The IP address type. Select one of the following:

• Select Private if you want to assign an IP address that is not reachable over Internet. You can use private IP address for communication between the G-vTAP Controller instances and GigaVUE-FM instances in the same network.
• Select Public if you want the IP address to be assigned from Azure’s pool of public IP address. The public IP address gets changed every time the instance is stopped and restarted.

Agent Tunnel Type

The type of tunnel used for sending the traffic from G-vTAP agents to GigaVUE V Series nodes. The options are GRE or VXLAN tunnels. If any Windows agents co-exist with Linux agents, VXLAN must be selected.

G-vTAP Agent MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit)

The Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) is the maximum size of each packet that the tunnel endpoint can carry from the G-vTAP agent to the GigaVUE V Series node.

For VXLAN, the default value is 1450. The G-vTAP agent tunnel MTU should be 50 bytes less than the agent's destination interface MTU size.
5. Click Save.
6. To view the G-vTAP Controllers connection status, click Visibility Fabric > G-vTAP Controllers.

The G-vTAP Controller instance takes a few minutes to fully initialize. After the initialization is complete, the connection status is displayed as OK. Refer to Figure 1139: G-vTAP Controllers Connection Status.

Figure 1139: G-vTAP Controllers Connection Status

The G-vTAP Controller launch is displayed as an event in the Cloud > Alarms/Events page.

Figure 1140: G-vTAP Controllers Events in Alarms/Events Page

To view the G-vTAP Controllers launched in your VNet:

1.   Login to the Azure account and select Services > VM.
2. In the left navigation pane, click Instances. The G-vTAP Controllers launched in your VNet can be seen as shown Figure 1141: G-vTAP Controllers Configured in Azure.

Figure 1141: G-vTAP Controllers Configured in Azure