Intelligent Compute: Inundated by a large and increasing variety of proprietary hardware appliances, many network operators are encouraging the development of interoperable solutions based on high- volume, industry-standard servers. Fundamental to this transition is the use of virtualization technology to consolidate software-based network functions and services, also referred to as network functions virtualization (NFV). Not [...]
Intelligent Compute: Inundated by a large and increasing variety of proprietary hardware appliances, many network operators are encouraging the development of interoperable solutions based on high- volume, industry-standard servers. Fundamental to this transition is the use of virtualization technology to consolidate software-based network functions and services, also referred to as network functions virtualization (NFV). Not surprisingly, NFV-based solutions for telecom, enterprise, cloud environments, etc. also need to incorporate security workloads.
Since most security applications use pattern matching, security vendors developing solutions for NFV understand the importance of delivering this function with consistent performance on virtualized computing platforms. This is possible with HyperScan from Intel, which is an OS- independent, multi-threaded software pattern matching library. This paper provides performance benchmark data demonstrating the scalable pattern matching performance HyperScan delivers when combined with Suricata, a fast-growing, open-source Intrusion Prevention and Detection (IPS/IDS) security application supported by the Open Information Security Foundation (www.oisf.org).