Nutanix Flow: the Next Generation of Virtual Networking and Security

IT organizations today are faced with the challenge of managing disparate workloads across geographically distributed environments. They’re tasked with keeping these environments secure as the frequency and damage of security threats escalates worldwide. Defending against these new threats at the physical network layer has become insufficient, and the increasing pace of innovation requires a solution that improves security without added friction.

The Nutanix Cloud Platform solution provides a common substrate for all types of applications across datacenters, public clouds, and at the edge. Organizations are able to deploy VMs and containers, manage structured and unstructured data, and protect those workloads and data with centralized management and operations. A common platform makes it possible to unify networking and security operations, and new technologies from Nutanix now makes this simple as well.

Introducing Nutanix Flow

The Nutanix Flow virtual networking and security product is now available with the AOS 6.10 release and consists of two components: the Nutanix Flow Virtual Networking and Nutanix Flow Network Security capabilities. Flow makes it easy for organizations to abstract networking and network security operations from the underlying physical network so workload access and connectivity can be managed efficiently across datacenters, public clouds, and at the edge.

Flow Virtual Networking virtualizes networking much like AOS virtualizes data storage. Instead of networks being managed at the physical layer, Flow Virtual Networking enables connectivity and access to be managed purely through software, abstracting network administration away from the underlying physical topology. This empowers application owners and cloud admins to deploy and manage complex multi-site applications without dependency on the team responsible for managing physical networks.

Flow Network Security delivers microsegmentation, which simplifies network security so administrators can control access to services and applications via software policies. This makes it much simpler to deliver the granular network access needed to maintain security in complex deployments without slowing down operations. Administrators can segment the network in software with the help of intelligent automation to identify logical network topologies, and then create software based firewalls and grant or deny access to groups or individual endpoints. 

The next generation of Nutanix Flow takes this capability beyond the virtual private datacenter and brings these benefits to hybrid cloud deployments with an enhanced new architecture that’s optimized for the scale, performance, and programmability required in hybrid multicloud environments.

The next generation of Nutanix Flow is now broadly available to customers with several releases worth of new functionality based on our experience and feedback since the original 2018 launch of Flow Network Security. For customers looking to migrate away from VMware products, Nutanix Flow is a robust and feature-rich alternative to VMware NSX.

Together, these benefits combine with virtual storage and compute capabilities to enable secure yet frictionless hybrid multicloud deployments.

New Capabilities

The next generation of Nutanix Flow includes a newly re-architected foundation that enhances integration between Flow Virtual Networking and Flow Network Security. Now you can use the same type of microsegmentation policies on-premises and in AWS and Microsoft Azure. With a consistent VPC construct across private and public clouds, you can stretch subnets and perform seamless disaster recovery between locations without changing IP addresses.

The new underlying architecture also enables far greater scalability than before, enabling up to 10,000 secured VMs per each Prism Central multi-cluster manager, while also boasting faster rule realization times in large multicluster environments.

The next generation of Nutanix Flow inside a VPC provides deeper, less resource-intensive integration with third-party security products via policy-based routing. This makes it possible to utilize software firewalls and other security appliances from leading security companies for additional inspection without having to deploy an appliance VM on every host.

Key Use Cases

Customers use Nutanix Flow to solve several key networking and security challenges across their hybrid multicloud environments. One of the most powerful and most widely utilized features is microsegmentation as part of Flow Network Security.

Microsegmentation is frequently used as part of a zero-trust security policy to protect critical data and workloads from unauthorized access even from within the perimeter firewall. It also makes it possible to create zones within an environment to isolate workloads using security policies to limit access – all configured and managed in software.

The second most popular use-case involves leveraging Flow Virtual Networking and VPCs to create even further isolated virtual networks with their own routing, especially when these networks might contain tenants or applications with overlapping addresses. This is most prevalent among service providers as they increasingly standardize on Nutanix to deliver services to customers.

Another common use case of VPCs involves simplifying workload migration across cloud and on-premises environments by using subnet extension and disaster recovery. VPCs dramatically simplify networking logic within application deployments that span hybrid multicloud environments. Workloads can partially migrate or fail over between the cloud and on-premises, all while keeping their IP addresses and maintaining connectivity thanks to the virtual network. Migrating workloads across locations is as simple as a point and click.

Conclusion

IT infrastructure now extends beyond the datacenter, driving the need for a unified platform that allows organizations to standardize operations and security for all of their applications and data. The Nutanix Cloud Platform delivers a comprehensive platform to manage applications and data across a globally distributed deployment, and Nutanix Flow makes it simple for you to keep them secure.

The next generation of Nutanix Flow is now widely available with AOS 6.10. If you are a Nutanix customer, upgrade today to take advantage of these new benefits. And if you’re a VMware customer looking at alternatives to vSphere and NSX, give Nutanix Flow a test drive to see how it delivers a powerful and cost-effective solution to solve your virtual networking and security needs.