Can I Put Kentik in My Data Center?

Summary

The most complex point of today’s networks is the edge, where there are more protocols, diverse traffic, and security exposure. The network edge is also a place where Kentik provides high value. In this post, we discuss how to implement Kentik in your data center.

The most complex point of today’s networks is the edge, where there are more protocols, diverse traffic, and security exposure. The network edge is also a place where Kentik provides high value. The bulk of Kentik’s customers use our differentiated platform to help them drive decision making on the edge of the network.

Kentik can also collect traffic from cloud services ─ complementing the complete picture across on-premises data centers and public cloud environments ─ all from a single platform. We recently added directionality for cloud data, and we are working towards new visibility across sites and locations in a more impactful way to visualize sites and data with a map-based user interface.

Since the edge is highly complex, our customers implement Kentik there first. The licensing fees for the edge are higher since we charge per edge device based on the total amount of throughput the device is capable of handling with its current configuration. All Kentik devices are licensed in this manner for both the edge and the data center. However, our data center pricing is much lower and has fewer features, such as full BGP support, which edge devices require.

The challenge is that within the data center you have many more devices (e.g., switches, routers, firewalls), hence the licensing we use is lower for the data center devices. Thus, if you have many smaller devices, Kentik has a higher value package called a FlowPak. The FlowPak is a bulk-licensed bucket of flows. Data center devices may provide the required visibility with higher sampling rates, and most run fewer flows, hence the FlowPak is a higher value offering. We’ve seen a lot of customer interest in this alternate licensing option.

FlowPaks come in the following sizes: 2,000 FPS, 5,000 FPS, 10,000 FPS, 20,000 FPS, 35,000 FPS, and 60,000 FPS. For anything higher, we provide a custom price and discount. (As a scalable SaaS platform, Kentik can handle unlimited traffic.)

Kentik is hard at work building a next-generation set of views and capabilities to drive farther into the data center. Stay tuned!

With any comments or questions, please reach out to us at info@kentik.com. You can also sign up for a demo or start a trial now.