Skylight Integration in Microsoft Azure

  • Published on Mar 2, 2023
  • 1 minute(s) read
  • Andrea Hilton
  • Henrik Nydell
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In this article we'll be delving into how Skylight is intregrated in Microsoft Azure.

The Cloud Challenges

More Complexity. More Users. Less visibility.

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No access to the network layer

There is no network layer access! How can I capture the network traffic?

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Azure Basic Concepts to Know

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Skylight in the cloud: general principles and architectures

Cloud visibility using Azure partner TAPs

Azure does not yet support packet mirroring (vTAP) natively on their platform, but relies on 3rd party software partners to perform traffic mirroring and forwarding to probes and analyzers. See Azure virtual network TAP partners page for Azure recommended solutions to mirror traffic.

Skylight sensor capture deployed in Azure

  • Receives monitored network traffic
  • Computes Per Packet Intel
  • Sends Per Packet Intel to Skylight analytics through HTTPS (TCP port 443)

Technical Requirements

Skylight sensor capture

  • Version 21.02.10-r1 release and above

Network Flows Requirements

Ingress traffic Egress traffic
Skylight sensor capture TCP port 443 to Skylight Analytics and TCP port 443 to NATS on same Skylight Analytics

Main Deployment Steps

  1. Deploy Skylight sensor: capture(s)

  2. Link deployed Skylight sensor capture(s) to your Skylight analytics tenant

How to deploy a Skylight sensor capture in Azure

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Sizing Small Medium Large
Flow analysis per min

Max average recommended

 100 K 1M 1,6M
CPU 2,4 GHz

2 Core / 4 Threads

 2,4 GHz

6 Core / 12 Threads

 2,4 GHz

8 Core / 16 Threads
RAM 6 GB 16 GB 24 GB
Data Disks (Read performances) 50 MB/s 80 MB/s 100 MB/s
Input / Output per second 500 IOPS 1000 IOPS 1000 IOPS

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How to link a Skylight sensor capture to a Skylight analytics tenant

  1. Select deployment model
    Type deploy show to check the actual deployment model

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Type deploy disable PVX to disable the PVX deployment model

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Type deploy enable Analytics to activate the appropriate deployment model
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  1. Link the Skylight sensor to your Skylight analytics own tenant
  • Type register skylight to initiate the process
  • When being prompted, provide the following information:
    • Tenant Host: URL of your Skylight analytics tenant
    • Username: your admin username
    • Password: password linked to your username

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  • You can check the presence of your sensor under Data Connections menu in Skylight analytics.

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