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Planning Your NFO Deployment Strategy

Defining Your Objectives​

Clearly articulate the business and technical goals for deploying NFO. What specific insights or capabilities are you aiming to achieve (e.g., enhanced security monitoring, network performance optimization, capacity planning, compliance)?

Understanding Your Network Environment​

  • Scale and Complexity: Assess the size and complexity of your network infrastructure, including the number of devices, segments, and geographic distribution.
  • Flow Data Landscape: Identify all potential flow exporting devices, the flow protocols they support, and their current export capabilities.
  • Downstream Integration Points: Determine the systems that will consume NFO's processed data (SIEM, log analytics, reporting tools). Understand their data format and connectivity requirements.
  • Availability and Resilience: Determine the required levels of uptime and fault tolerance for your NFO deployment.

Resource Assessment​

  • Hardware and Infrastructure: Evaluate your available server resources (physical or virtual), network bandwidth, and storage capacity.
  • Personnel and Expertise: Identify the team members responsible for deployment, configuration, and ongoing management, and assess their relevant skills.

Architecture Selection​

Your flow volume will determine your architecture:

ArchitectureRecommended ForCore Components
Single-NodeLow-to-moderate flow volumes where one server can handle all processing and storage.NFO Server (All functions combined)
Distributed (NFO Central)High flow volumes, typically exceeding 300,000 flows/sec, requiring horizontal scalability, high availability, and intelligent load balancing.NFO Central (Load Balancer) + License Manager + NFO Peer Nodes (Processing & Output)