VPN monitoring tool

A virtual private network (VPN) helps establish a connection between remote users and private networks. These connections are secured by data encryption, where data flows between the device and the network via a shielded path called a VPN tunnel. VPNs significantly boost your device's privacy and provide global accessibility of resources.

VPN monitoring is the process of keeping an eye on critical metrics to maintain the integrity of the VPN connection and ensure it's robust. In addition, VPN monitoring ensures sensitive data gets transmitted across VPN tunnels without being exploited by intruders.

OpManager's VPN monitoring feature

OpManager's built-in VPN monitoring feature helps monitor VPN connections, track the health and performance of all VPN links, and monitor data transmission across VPN tunnels to proactively handle any impending roadblocks. OpManager supports site-to-site VPN monitoring, enabling you to monitor the private traffic across the branches of your organization. It also supports prominent leaders in the VPN infrastructure market such as Cisco, Fortinet, and Watchguard right out of the box.

Compromising on VPN monitoring can have many repercussions for a company, ranging from productivity loss and an adverse impact on revenue to jeopardizing confidential data or even the loss of loyal customers due to safety breaches.

• Security breach and appropriation of vital information: Ineffective or no VPN monitoring can leave private networks vulnerable to unauthorized access, paving the way for data theft.

 

• Overlooking traffic overloads and blocks in data traffic: Failure to address impending irregularities in VPN tunnels can lead to suspended connections, in turn effecting how the business functions.

In-depth analysis of VPN tunnels and related entities

OpManager is capable of monitoring up to 100 VPN tunnels from single firewall device. During a firewall device's discovery process, OpManager identifies its VPN tunnels and begins monitoring their availability and bandwidth. When discovery is complete, a dedicated tab with real-time monitoring stats is available in the device's snapshot page:

• Host Name: The device hostname or IP address of the end device to which this firewall device has an established tunnel.
• Status: The current availability status of the host. This is updated by polling the device at regular intervals.
• Rx/Tx Traffic: Traffic transmitted and received through the VPN tunnel.
• Encryption and Hashing: The encryption and hashing algorithms for secure communication.

The snapshot page also shows a dedicated VPN Details widget displaying the number of currently active Hosts, the number of Tunnels Up or Down, and Bandwidth for Rx and Tx traffic between the end pair. These metrics are updated based on the monitoring interval configured, keeping you updated on the recent health of tunnels.

Real-time performance monitoring and troubleshooting alerts

OpManager sends down alerts when the monitored VPN tunnel is unavailable or if the total traffic violates the configured threshold. These alerts can be leveraged for more effective troubleshooting.

OpManager automatically associates a set of VPN-specific performance monitors to the firewall device once it's discovered in OpManager. These monitors help you obtain device-specific data regarding VPN performance and traffic. You can further modify the thresholds for the respective monitors according to your environment, and keep an eye on the overall performance to check if the metric is under control. Listed below is a set of default performance monitors that come built-in with the firewall devices of their respective vendors.

You can also associate notification profiles for high priority devices so network administrators receive notifications via SMS, email, etc. when there's a problem with a VPN's tunnel health.

Custom dashboards for VPN widgets

Say goodbye to moving between multiple windows to fetch crucial data; with OpManager, you can monitor all business-critical VPN metrics on one screen. Create customized dashboards that can accommodate VPN widgets such as VPN tunnel monitoring, VPN traffic monitoring, and other widgets you feel are critical to your business, helping you draw inferences with ease. All you have to do is create a custom dashboard, select the desired performance monitors, add them to your dashboard, and you're good to go.

Data visualization and VPN-specific reports

OpManager offers graphical and tabular representations of data sets to help gauge and visualize data seamlessly and derive better inferences. You can drill down further into the individual metrics graphs, or view all charts on the same page to gain a holistic view of the current trends.

To study trends over longer intervals, OpManager generates reports that include stats obtained over a longer period of time. The VPN Summary report provides personalized information on overall VPN performance and availability. You can schedule or export these reports to other formats like PDF or XLS, and also generate custom reports as per your organization's needs.

Additional VPN specific performance monitors

In addition to the default monitors associated to firewall devices, OpManager comes with a set of performance monitors exclusive to VPN monitoring. You can associate these monitors to the required devices directly or via Device Templates, and start monitoring the health and performance of VPN tunnels.