SD-WAN Monitoring

How does SD-WAN work?

SD-WAN, or Software-Defined Wide-Area Network, is a game-changing technology that redefines how businesses manage their networks and applications. At its core, SD-WAN enhances the quality of user experiences by intelligently directing traffic based on the nature of the applications. It ensures applications run smoothly and securely, aligning with business priorities.

Under the hood, SD-WAN creates a virtual layer over various network connections like MPLS, internet broadband, or wireless. This overlay simplifies network management and allows for real-time traffic control. A central controller, often in the form of software, orchestrates data flows, distributing network and security policies across connected devices. This centralization streamlines the setup of network edge devices, reducing manual configurations.

SD-WAN comes in two primary flavors: overlay SD-WAN, where a vendor provides the necessary software within a network edge device, and managed SD-WAN, where providers handle the network for you. Despite the different options, all SD-WAN deployments typically offer virtualization of WAN connections, centralized policy control, orchestration, and dynamic traffic management.

Overall, SD-WAN delivers cost-efficiency, network flexibility, and improved application performance, making it a top choice for modern businesses. It separates applications from the network and ensures each one has the best connection based on predefined rules, ultimately transforming how enterprises handle their networking needs.

How do I monitor SD-WAN?

The correct approach to SD-WAN monitoring is essential for ensuring the optimal performance, security, and reliability of SD-WAN Networks. It provides real-time visibility into network behavior, performance metrics, and security events, enabling proactive issue resolution, resource optimization, and compliance adherence.

SD-WAN Monitoring helps identify and address bottlenecks, latency, packet loss, and performance degradation, ensuring critical applications receive the necessary bandwidth and quality of service. It aids in SD-WAN troubleshooting, identifying network anomalies, reducing downtime, and minimizing business impact.

By using the right SD-WAN monitoring tools, capacity planning, and security enhancements are facilitated by analyzing historical data. In scenarios where multiple tunnels and service providers are in use, it's important to ensure the SD-WAN monitoring software in use will enable administrators to drill down and get the metrics they need to identify problematic service providers.

SD-WAN monitoring tools correlate overlay and underlay metrics for a comprehensive understanding of network performance. As WANs become more distributed and complex, traditional monitoring tools are inadequate, necessitating a heterogeneous, user-centric, end-to-end approach to SD-WAN performance monitoring.

What are the benefits of SD-WAN?

SD-WAN, or Software-Defined Wide-Area Network, offers significant advantages for modern network management. One key benefit is the flexibility it provides in configuring SD-WAN topology.

Organizations can design their network architecture to suit their specific needs, whether it’s optimizing traffic flow, improving redundancy, or enhancing network efficiency. This approach results in reduced latency, improved network performance, and enhanced data transfer within the network.

Additionally, SD-WAN enhances security by allowing for centralized control and encryption, protecting data in transit. It simplifies network administration, reducing downtime, and ensuring a more reliable and scalable network infrastructure. In summary, SD-WAN’s ability to adapt and optimize network topology makes it a valuable tool for organizations seeking to streamline their network operations.

Which SD-WAN vendors does SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted monitor?

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted offers comprehensive monitoring support for several SD-WAN vendors. We proudly support the vendors below, ensuring you can seamlessly monitor and optimize your SD-WAN network performance and security. Always check the latest release notes for the most current list of supported vendors.

• Meraki
• Viptela
• VeloCloud
• Prisma
• Fortinet FortiManager
• Aruba Central
• Aruba EdgeConnect

 We are continually working to expand our list of supported vendors, so it's always a good practice to stay updated by checking our release notes for the most current information on newly supported devices. Our commitment to a multi-vendor approach in SD-WAN monitoring allows us to adapt to the diverse technology landscape, ensuring your evolving SD-WAN infrastructure remains well-supported, regardless of the vendors you choose to incorporate.