At the moment, enterprises are more and more shifting away from conventional virtualization platforms in favor of extra trendy options to construct cloud-native functions. The shift to cloud-native architectures and the adoption and deployment of containers and microservices have been underway for years. Advantages like enhanced resiliency, scalability, extensibility, agility, and the power to handle lots of the limitations inherent in conventional virtualization stacks have pushed this transition. Now, this shift has been accelerated.
Rising licensing prices and the constraints of older virtualization platforms – for instance, legacy methods not optimized for contemporary, cloud-native functions – are accelerating this shift. Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is an instance of a current catalyst, main many purchasers to discover extra cloud-native and cost-effective virtualization alternate options.
Importantly, Kubernetes can now handle various workloads similar to containers, digital machines (VMs), and naked metallic throughout on-premises and public cloud environments. However the conventional community segmentation designed for older virtualization environments can’t be prolonged to Kubernetes as is; it’s designed for static VM environments and ill-equipped for the age of Kubernetes, container-based architectures, and multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
Segmentation is important for sustaining compliance and enhancing safety in environments with shared bodily infrastructure. By isolating tenants, segmentation reduces the chance of unauthorized entry and ensures that delicate knowledge is protected, serving to organizations meet regulatory necessities and safe their operations.
Right here, we’ll discover the problems with conventional community segmentation and stroll by means of the best way to overcome challenges utilizing common microsegmentation.
Legacy Approaches and Challenges with Present Segmentation Options
As many organizations are modernizing their virtualization environments, they’re adopting Kubernetes as a complete orchestrator for managing workloads for his or her functions each on-premises and within the public cloud. Trendy virtualization platforms should help several types of workloads, similar to VMs, containers, and naked metals, with Kubernetes for each on-premises and public cloud deployments.
Now, new cloud-native environments have rendered present segmentation approaches and options out of date. Historically, enterprises section their virtualized environments by creating distinct digital networks and safety zones primarily based on perform, for instance, manufacturing, improvement, and testing environments. They obtain this by implementing VLANs and logical switches for community segmentation and imposing strict entry management insurance policies to isolate and defend delicate knowledge and functions. Present community segmentation options like NSX are efficient for conventional VM environments, however their structure and design are unable to deal with the dynamic nature of Kubernetes environments, which decouples infrastructure from tenants and has a flat, open community strategy. As Kubernetes workloads are extremely dynamic, pods are created and destroyed regularly. Conventional community segmentation options merely can’t sustain with the speedy modifications in community configurations and insurance policies.
Burgeoning Want for Unified Microsegmentation
Common Microsegmentation is essential for workload observability, safety, and efficiency in new virtualization environments throughout on-premises and public cloud.
With this, segmentation options ought to embrace:
Help for several types of workloads: Single Atmosphere: If enterprises migrate your entire footprint of their VMs to a brand new virtualization platform similar to KubeVirt, the segmentation answer needs to be outfitted to help each VMs and containers throughout on-premises and public cloud environments and deal with the flat community created with Kubernetes. It ought to create workload isolation and safety zones for all these workloads as a single coverage framework.
Help for several types of virtualization environments: Hybrid Atmosphere: Relying on the group’s VM footprint and utility deployment necessities unfold throughout on-premises and public cloud, community and platform groups might be able to migrate a partial set of VMs to a brand new virtualization platform that helps each VMs and containers.
One further consideration: organizations could hold a couple of VMs within the current virtualization surroundings for compliance, safety, or enterprise causes. In such a situation, a microsegmentation answer should work not solely in trendy virtualization platforms but in addition in current platforms similar to vSphere. It ought to be capable of do microsegmentation for workloads (VMs, containers, naked metallic) in each on-premises and public cloud environments.
Overcoming Challenges By means of Strategic Answer Adoption
Organizations migrating from legacy virtualization platforms to trendy virtualization options ought to prioritize adopting a strong, dynamic, and high-performance community coverage engine to carry out segmentation throughout each on-premises and public cloud deployments and completely different workloads from digital machines, containers, and naked metallic.
When looking for an answer to satisfy their group’s wants, IT determination makers ought to search for the next capabilities and advantages for managing completely different workloads:
-
Unified Safety Mannequin: Presents a constant safety mannequin throughout varied environments. A unified safety mannequin additionally simplifies the creation and enforcement of community insurance policies throughout several types of infrastructure.
-
Dynamic Coverage Enforcement: Allows community insurance policies to be dynamically utilized as workloads are moved, created, or terminated, making certain community insurance policies are at all times up-to-date with out guide intervention.
-
Granular Insurance policies: Permits the creation of fine-grained insurance policies for explicit workloads in a hybrid surroundings, offering exact management over allowed and denied visitors.
-
Visibility: Helps directors get rid of guesswork. Visibility into workload visitors flows to create a complete map that helps directors get rid of the guesswork concerned in understanding workload dependencies and safety and compliance gaps.
-
Distributed IDS/IPS: Protects in opposition to network-based threats. Determination-makers ought to search for a workload-centric IDS/IPS that defend in opposition to network-based threats by ingesting completely different menace feeds obtainable by default and customized sources to pinpoint the supply of malicious exercise in case of a breach.
With a single segmentation answer, customers may decrease the overhead of managing a number of segmentation options.
Addressing Legacy Challenges with Trendy Options
The necessity to handle various workloads effectively and the will to scale back licensing prices has accelerated enterprises’ migration from legacy virtualization platforms to trendy virtualization options.
Now, present community segmentation options for conventional virtualization environments are insufficient for the dynamic nature of Kubernetes. A brand new segmentation answer should help each VMs and containers throughout single and hybrid environments unfold throughout on-premises and public cloud. Enterprises can deal with these wants – making certain seamless and environment friendly segmentation for his or her evolving virtualization environments – by adopting options with sturdy microsegmentation capabilities to attain common microsegmentation.