Virtual appliance - Hyper-V

The Plixer FlowPro virtual appliance for Hyper-V is provided as an all-in-one VHD template to streamline the deployment process.

Importing the virtual machine

To deploy the Plixer FlowPro virtual appliance in Hyper-V, follow these steps:

  1. Contact Plixer Technical Support and use the link they provide (https://files.plixer.com/PACKAGE_PATH_AND_FILENAME) to download the latest Hyper-V virtual appliance package.

  2. Extract the contents of the package to a location on the Hyper-V server.

  3. Open Hyper-V Manager, right-click the virtual machine, and then select Import Virtual Machine.

  4. Browse to the location of the Plixer FlowPro appliance folder.

  5. Select the Plixer FlowPro virtual machine and click Next.

  6. Use the radio buttons to select the import operation type and click Next.

  7. Verify the settings in the summary and click Finish to import the virtual machine.

  8. Right-click on the Plixer FlowPro virtual machine and select Settings…

  9. In the Settings menu, select the network adapter and assign it to the appropriate virtual switch.

  10. Configure additional interfaces as needed, and then connect them to the observation point(s).

After the Plixer FlowPro virtual appliance has been deployed and configured in Hyper-V, proceed to configuring the appliance.

Note

The virtual appliance’s default configuration has one network adapter (MGMT). Any additional interfaces will be labeled monX and automatically used to listen for traffic. This can be verified by checking Flowpro.Interfaces in ~/flowpro/flowpro-settings.yaml after the appliance is deployed. If a different network needs to be monitored, a mirror port of a virtual distributed switch or a mirror port using a physical NIC on the Hyper-V server will need to be configured.

Adding new interfaces

To add one or more new interfaces to the Plixer FlowPro virtual appliance, follow these steps:

  1. In Hyper-V Manager, right click on the VM, and then select Settings….

  2. From the Settings… window, select Add Hardware.

  3. From the dropdown menu, click Network Adapter.

  4. Connect to SPAN Network or standard network which can receive GRE traffic from network infrastructure for ERSPAN.

After the new interface(s) have been added, they can be connected to observation points as needed.

Note

When adding interfaces to an existing deployment, use the Plixer FlowPro setup utility’s auxiliary runmodes to configure them for use.