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As part of the Cisco Solution Partner Program, Garland Technology helps provide visibility and access for Cisco security and performance monitoring solutions. The partnership provides value to companies deploying Cisco products including the ASA/Firepower NGFWs.
In today’s enterprise networks, IT professionals need visibility and access to their data anytime and anywhere, in addition to being able to ensure that should an appliance fail, the health of the entire network won’t be affected. With Garland Technology’s bypass TAP technology, you can take a single network link, and create a solution that provides resiliency for the network.
A scenario we often come across with our customers is that they only have a single network link available on their switch to dedicate to active, inline security tools. Typically with only one link to TAP, you are limited to connecting to one inline tool, such as a Cisco ASA/FIrePower Appliance. However, utilizing Garland’s Integrated Bypass Network TAP System for 1G network speeds, it is possible to create a system that adds redundancy to your network using just that one link.
As you can see in the drawing above, the high availability TAP with automatic failover offers fail-safe protection for inline appliances. If the primary appliance were to go down for any reason, the TAP will automatically failover to the backup appliance, ensuring your network remains protected. This is done through the use of heartbeat packets that are sent out of each monitoring port. If the heartbeat packets are not received from either direction, then the TAP will revert to bypass mode, essentially bypassing the point of failure (primary appliance) and routing traffic to the backup appliance.
This solution allows IT professionals to take an active, inline appliance like a Cisco NGFW offline for updates, maintenance and troubleshooting, without causing network downtime, or interrupting traffic flow. When the maintenance is complete, and the appliance is back inline, heartbeat packets will be read by the Bypass TAP and it will switch back to the primary appliance.
In addition to providing the resiliency to the single network link, the high availability solution also generates two full-duplex copies of the network traffic to send to additional out-of-band monitoring tool for application/network performance monitoring. This high availability solution provides the enterprise the greatest value with only tapping a single network link.
By partnering with a certified solution provider you save time by reducing or eliminating preliminary research/compatibility and proof of concept. Garland is the only network TAP vendor to hold the Cisco Compatible distinction which demonstrates our commitment to the Cisco partnership and to manufacturing quality products with zero tolerance to failure.
[Want to learn more about Garland Technology's partnership with Cisco? Check out our updated technology partner page, or stop by our booth at CiscoLive! to learn more about how one of our certified Cisco solutions may work for your network.]