F5 Networks provides the SSL Orchestrator, a high-performance decryption, analysis, and re-encryption tool for SSL/TLS traffic across the network to locate threats or data exfiltration efforts concealed in encrypted traffic.
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OpenNMS Meridian
Score 8.0 out of 10
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OpenNMS Meridian is a scalable open source network management platform with network traffic analysis, network discovery, alerting, and monitoring. It's presented as a solution to monitor enterprise network performance and ensure the availability and performance of critical network services.
$42,000
per year
Pricing
F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator
OpenNMS Meridian
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essential
$42,000
per year Up to 2 Meridian and cores Up to 25 Minions
Premier
$56,700
per year Up to 4 Meridian cores and Up to 100 Minions
F5 SSL Orchestrator is an ideal software to address the blind spots of the encryption of incoming and outgoing traffic, this is because it provides a high visibility of the traffic. By having a management based on policies allows to carry out a simpler management and obtain a more integration easy with existing infrastructures. It is ideal for reducing costs as it allows the creation of dynamic devices, thereby evaluating whether the traffic should be decrypted or not.
I would recommend all system administrators use some form of network monitoring if they are not already doing so, and I'd definitely recommend people consider OpenNMS if they're shopping around. Small businesses will benefit from the low-cost of entry (it's free!), whilst getting all the enterprise features. Larger businesses can benefit from paid support plans.
However, there's no getting around the fact that you will require some advanced networking and sysadmin knowledge to get the most out of OpenNMS, or at least, be prepared for a steep learning curve. If you don't have the resources to devote this time initially, you may struggle.
It is a software with a somewhat complex documentation so when you are in doubt it is difficult to solve it through its documentation.
A good knowledge is required in the management of the software, because although its implementation is flexible, carrying it out in the appropriate way guarantees good operation.
Its price can be somewhat high if it is a small company, however considering its high versatility the investment is worth it.
Learning curve somewhat steep, but you can count on the support of your support team.
I haven't quite figured out how to make topologies work yet, but I haven't spent a ton of time on it either.
We've also had a bit of trouble importing some MIBs, but that usually boiled down to working with the vendor to make sure we had the right MIBs and dependencies.
OpenSSL is a simple software to use, with a complete documentation and an easy installation and ideal for encrypting and decrypting and making certificates, however F5 SSL Orchestrator can be implemented in different ways, it provides a high visibility of the traffic which does not miss any threat It wants to hide in encrypted traffic, but its biggest advantage is that it helps to better manage and does not provide static but dynamic devices so it is possible to decrypt once or encrypt once, it is for all these powerful features that F5 SSL Orchestrator was chosen.
OpenNMS's more attractive GUI and its price break were the main reasons our company chose to explore and use this product. However, it never managed to actually replace Nagios which had a much more established hold within the company. Perhaps we were over-monitoring, but our company claimed a $100k loss per hour of downtime.
By providing a high vision of inbound and outbound traffic, we manage to avoid the entry of threats and the exposure or loss of data from our business infrastructure.
Its policy based management is very helpful, since it is much simpler to manage SSL traffic and to be aware of any attack coming from it and to apply security controls to all business traffic.
Initial adoption required quite a lot of resources and time to get everything right. Totally worth it for us; just be prepared for a gradual process that will get better and better with time.
Once setup and running smoothly, it provides us with all the reporting we could hope for, at near zero cost.
With OpenNMS, we're able to offer a much more reliable service to our customers, and spend a lot less time dealing with issues.
