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.