Cisco strengthens AWS integration to speed troubleshooting in multicloud environments

For Kubernetes users, including those running on AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service, the eBPF-based Cilium delivers kernel-level visibility, according to Gillis. “Every time a process reads a file, spawns another process or opens a network connection, eBPF code embedded in Cilium executes in the kernel, allowing it to gather detailed telemetries — such as TCP and UDP protocol data, packet loss and latency,” Gillis wrote.

Cisco is a supporter of the open-source Cilium project, he added.

The new, deep integrations between Cisco and AWS give networking teams detailed insights into process-level activity within all workloads, Gillis stated. “This allows them to monitor network performance metrics, visualize the entire application path and correlate all the data for rapid troubleshooting — all in one central management plane. What used to take days of finger-pointing between teams now takes minutes to resolve,” he wrote.

Cisco and AWS have worked to integrate their technologies over the past few years to help enterprise customers deploy and manage cloud-based resources. 

Most recently, Cisco ThousandEyes rolled out Cloud Insights, a new multicloud product aimed at extending cloud infrastructure discovery and configuration changes to application performance, Gillis stated. “This new solution extends ThousandEyes’ well known path visualization capabilities into the AWS network and also correlates how traffic flow impacts application performance,” Gillis wrote.

Last year, Cisco integrated its ThousandEyes network intelligence platform with Amazon CloudWatch to help customers better locate and monitor their AWS-powered applications. The integration gives customers access to Internet health events and Internet performance insights that could impact cloud workload performance and behavior, while ThousandEyes integration brings end-to-end cloud and Internet visibility.