In this article we'll be delving into how Skylight is intregrated in Microsoft Azure.

The Cloud Challenges

More Complexity. More Users. Less visibility.

No access to the network layer

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

Azure Basic Concepts to Know

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

Deploy Skylight sensor: capture(s)
Link deployed Skylight sensor capture(s) to your Skylight analytics tenant

How to deploy a Skylight sensor capture in Azure

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

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

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

Type deploy disable PVX to disable the PVX deployment model

Type deploy enable Analytics to activate the appropriate deployment model

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

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

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