Solera Networks, a supplier of deep packet capture and stream-to-storage appliances, released a beta version of its free Solera V2P Tap application. 
This enables organizations deploying virtual machines to leverage their existing investments in network management and security tools by regenerating virtual network traffic, including intra-server virtual machine network traffic, to their existing physical security infrastructure to monitor and protect virtual network activity.
Solera said that for many organizations, monitoring and securing the virtual environment means an additional investment to deploy security tools and processes in the virtual network–the same tools they already have in the physical environment.
The Solera V2P Tap sits passively in a virtual environment leveraging VMware Vswitch technology, capturing all network traffic from within the virtual environment and regenerating all or some of that traffic in real-time to the physical environment for monitoring and analysis by existing tools. It uses existing intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), as well as other standard security tools to analyze traffic between virtual machines. While originating from the virtual infrastructure, traffic that is regenerated to these security systems appears as any other network traffic and can therefore be analyzed using the same procedures.
The free download of the Solera V2P Tap is now available in beta for evaluation. After completion of the beta, the download will continue to be available for free.http://www.soleranetworks.com/virtualtap
