The Best Network Function Visualization Tools

Large data sets are not always easy to consume. Large data sets can occasionally make it difficult to extract any relevant information from them. Data visualizations can help with that.

Data visualization creation is rarely simple. Designers can’t just start from the beginning with a data collection containing tens of thousands of records and produce a display, after all. Yes, it is technically feasible, but who wants to put in dozens or even hundreds of hours charting dots on a scatter chart? Tools for data visualization can help with this.

Here is Our List of Best Network Function Visualization Tools:

1. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Simplifies virtualization management with comprehensive monitoring and intuitive performance optimization tools
2. Cisco Routers Provide reliable and secure network connectivity, enabling seamless communication and efficient data transfer across diverse networks.
3. Tableau Empowers organizations with its powerful data visualization capabilities, enabling data-driven decision-making and interactive analytics.
4. Infogram Revolutionizes data storytelling by offering a versatile platform that effortlessly transforms raw data into captivating visual representations.
5. Altaro Simplifies data protection for virtualized environments, offering easy-to-use backup and recovery solutions tailored to businesses of all sizes.
6. VMware NSX Delivers network virtualization and security, enabling organizations to build dynamic and agile software-defined networks.

What Is Network Visualization? — A Short Guide

Making an “illustration” of your network, such as a map, diagram, or sketch, to show how particular network parts are arranged is known as network visualization. You can more readily gain a general understanding of connections between servers, routers, workstations, and other devices with network visualization, regardless of whether those connections are hardwired or describe data flows. Some maps additionally provide real-time information on node status. This not only aids in your network understanding but also makes it simple for you to spot, pinpoint, and resolve important network performance and health issues.

Network mapping, network map visualization, network graph visualization, and network topology mapping are other terms for network visualization. No matter what you call it, network visualization is crucial for gaining insight into your network and maintaining optimal network performance. It offers the kind of visibility and intuitive understanding a spreadsheet or chart just can’t match.

The best data visualization tools on the market have a few things in common. First is their ease of use. There are some incredibly complicated apps available for visualizing data. Some have excellent documentation and tutorials and are designed in ways that feel intuitive to the user. Others are lacking in those areas, eliminating them from any list of “best” tools, regardless of their other capabilities.

The best tools can also handle huge sets of data. The very best can even handle multiple sets of data in a single visualization.

The Best Network Function Visualization Tools

1. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager 

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a comprehensive virtualization management software designed to monitor, optimize, and manage virtual environments. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a powerful tool for managing virtualized environments, providing administrators with comprehensive visibility, performance monitoring, capacity planning, and optimization capabilities. Virtualization Manager provides real-time monitoring of virtual infrastructure, including hypervisors, virtual machines (VMs), clusters, and hosts. It offers a centralized dashboard that displays critical metrics, performance indicators, and alerts, enabling administrators to proactively identify and resolve issues.

Key Features:

• Real-time monitoring and performance analysis of virtual infrastructure
• Capacity planning and right-sizing for optimal resource utilization
• VM sprawl control and optimization recommendations
• Chargeback capabilities for cost transparency
• Compliance monitoring and auditing features

The tool assists in controlling VM sprawl by identifying inactive or underutilized VMs. It provides recommendations for VM consolidation, reclamation, or removal, helping optimize resource consumption and reduce costs. Virtualization Manager enables organizations to implement chargeback or show-back models by tracking resource consumption and costs associated with VMs. It provides visibility into resource utilization across departments or business units, facilitating cost allocation and billing.

The software offers insights and recommendations for efficient resource allocation, including CPU, memory, storage, and network resources. It helps optimize resource usage, prevent contention, and improve overall performance. Virtualization Manager assists in ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations by providing pre-built and customizable reports for auditing virtual environments. It helps monitor and track configuration changes, virtualization security, and compliance-related metrics.

Virtualization Manager integrates seamlessly with other SolarWinds products and third-party tools, enhancing its capabilities and allowing administrators to manage virtualized environments alongside other IT infrastructure components. It also provides REST APIs for custom integrations and automation.

They are networking devices that play a critical role in connecting and directing data packets across computer networks. These firewalls do particularly well when looking to visualize your network function, as they provide both native graphics and support for data integration into other tools.

Cisco routers excel at more advanced routing, and serving larger enterprise environments. These routers employ routing protocols like Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), and Routing Information Protocol (RIP) to efficiently determine the best path for data transmission.

Key Features:

• Advanced routing capabilities with support for protocols like BGP, OSPF, and RIP
• Robust security features including firewall, VPN, and IPS
• Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms for traffic prioritization
• Scalability with support for various interfaces and WAN technologies
• High availability features for network resilience and failover

Cisco routers offer robust security features to protect networks from unauthorized access and threats. These include firewall capabilities, VPN support, access control lists (ACLs), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and advanced encryption protocols. Cisco’s security solutions, such as Cisco IOS Firewall and Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), enhance network security and safeguard against potential vulnerabilities.

Cisco routers prioritize and manage network traffic through QoS mechanisms, ensuring that critical applications and services receive appropriate bandwidth and resources. QoS features enable network administrators to control and prioritize traffic based on parameters like latency, bandwidth, and packet loss, guaranteeing a consistent user experience for important applications.

3. Tableau 

Tableau is a powerful data visualization and business intelligence software that allows users to analyze and present data in a visually appealing and interactive manner. It provides a wide range of features and tools that enable individuals and organizations to gain insights from their data, make data-driven decisions, and communicate findings effectively. Tableau can connect to various data sources, including databases, spreadsheets, cloud services, and big data platforms. It enables users to bring together disparate data sources for comprehensive analysis.

Key Features: 

• Powerful data visualization and analytics with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.
• Interactive visualizations for exploring data and uncovering insights.
• Wide range of visualization options, including charts, graphs, and maps.
• Seamless data connection and integration with various sources.

Tableau offers data preparation capabilities, allowing users to clean, transform, and shape their data without the need for complex coding or scripting. It simplifies the process of preparing data for analysis by providing a user-friendly interface. One of the standout features of Tableau is its intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Users can easily create visualizations by dragging and dropping fields onto the canvas, without the need for extensive programming knowledge.

Tableau provides a wide array of visualization options, such as bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots, maps, and more. These visualizations can be customized with various colors, shapes, and sizes, and users can interact with them to explore different aspects of the data. With Tableau, users can create interactive dashboards by combining multiple visualizations onto a single canvas. Dashboards allow for a holistic view of the data and provide an easy way to share insights with others.

4. Infogram

Infogram is an online data visualization and infographics tool that allows users to create compelling visual representations of data, making complex information more accessible and engaging. Infogram offers a user-friendly interface with a drag-and-drop functionality that makes it easy for users to create visually appealing and interactive infographics, charts, maps, and reports without the need for extensive design or coding skills. Infogram provides a vast library of professionally designed templates that cover a wide range of topics and data types.

Key Features:

• User-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality
• Vast template library for various infographic and visualization types
• Seamless data import and integration from multiple sources
• Interactive elements for data exploration and filtering
• Collaboration and sharing features for team collaboration
• Responsive and mobile-friendly visualizations
• Analytics and tracking capabilities for measuring engagement

Infogram offers a variety of interactive visualization options such as charts, graphs, maps, and progress bars. Users can customize these visualizations by applying different colors, fonts, and styles, and add interactive elements like tooltips, animations, and clickable areas to enhance user engagement. Infogram provides interactive features that allow users to explore and filter data within the visualizations. This enables viewers to interact with the data and focus on specific aspects, enhancing their understanding and enabling deeper analysis.

Infogram supports collaboration among team members by providing options for real-time collaboration, commenting, and sharing. Users can invite others to collaborate on a project, gather feedback, and work together to create impactful visualizations. Infogram also allows users to publish and share their visualizations on websites, blogs, and social media platforms or embed them in presentations and reports.

Infogram visualizations are responsive and optimized for different screen sizes, ensuring a consistent and engaging experience across devices. This enables users to create visualizations that are easily accessible and readable on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

5. Altaro 

Altaro is a leading provider of backup and disaster recovery solutions for businesses of all sizes. With a focus on simplicity, reliability, and affordability, Altaro offers a comprehensive suite of products that protect virtualized environments, including VMware, Hyper-V, and physical servers. Altaro offers a robust VM backup solution that allows organizations to protect their virtualized infrastructure efficiently. It supports both VMware and Hyper-V platforms, enabling users to back up entire VMs or specific files and folders within them. Altaro’s backup technology ensures minimal impact on performance and offers various storage options, including local disks, network shares, or cloud storage.

Key Features:

• Virtual Machine (VM) backup for VMware and Hyper-V
• Offsite replication for disaster recovery
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for minimal data loss
• Deduplication and compression for optimized storage efficiency
• Sandbox for testing and verification of backups

Altaro’s Offsite Replication feature facilitates the replication of VM backups to an offsite location, providing an additional layer of protection against site-level disasters. This feature allows for the restoration of VMs in the event of a primary site failure or data center outage, ensuring business continuity.

Altaro’s CDP feature enables near-instantaneous backups by capturing changes at the block level as they occur. With CDP, businesses can minimize data loss and achieve high recovery point objectives (RPOs) in mere seconds, ensuring minimal data loss in the event of a disaster.

Altaro employs advanced deduplication and compression algorithms, reducing storage requirements and optimizing backup efficiency. By eliminating duplicate data and compressing backups, businesses can save valuable storage space while improving overall backup performance.

6. VMware NSX 

VMware NSX is a powerful software-defined networking and security platform that brings virtualization principles to network infrastructure. It enables organizations to create, manage, and secure dynamic virtual networks, delivering increased flexibility, agility, and efficiency. VMware NSX extends the capabilities of VMware’s virtualization platform by virtualizing networking and security services.

Key Features:

• Virtualizes networking and security services
• Micro-segmentation for fine-grained network control
• Centralized management and policy-based automation
• Seamless connectivity between on-premises and public cloud environments

The NSX Distributed Firewall operates at the virtual machine (VM) level and provides micro-segmentation capabilities. It allows for granular control over network traffic, securing East-West communication within the data center. NSX Logical Switching virtualizes Layer 2 networks. It enables the creation of logical switches that span across multiple hypervisors and clusters, simplifying network provisioning and improving workload mobility.

NSX Distributed Routing enables scalable and efficient routing within the NSX environment. It eliminates the need for physical routers for East-West traffic, reducing latency and improving network performance. Verify the compatibility of the existing virtualization platform (VMware vSphere) and network hardware with the desired NSX version.