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Cisco Data in Motion

Cisco® Data in Motion (DMo) is a software technology that provides data management and first-order analysis at the edge. In order to understand the need for this technology, it is important to first understand the deluge of data that is coming onto the network due to the Internet of Things (IOT).

It is believed that over the next 7-10 years the number of smart objects will grow to be over 50 billion. Additionally, when looking at the trends of cost for storage, compute, and wide areas communications it becomes apparently that the cost limiting factor in IOT innovations will rapidly become the ability to transport informational across the network.

When we examine several of the applications in the IOT space with the context of constrained and expensive bandwidth it becomes clear that the traditional two tier architectures are no longer sufficient to or cost effective. As examples of the types of data flow within IOT.

  • Energy Utility Companies Process: 1.1 BILLION Data Points (.5TB) per Day
  • A Large Offshore Field Produces: 0.75TB of Data Weekly
  • An Airplane: 10TB of Data for Every 30 Minutes of Flight

The deluge of data and the need to distribute the processing, storage, and optimization of this data leads quickly to a requirement for a 3 tier architecture including edge computing and Cisco® Data in Motion is a critical part of making this data manageable at scale.

Product Architecture and Functions

Cisco® Data in Motion provides mechanisms to capture data and control flows within the network translating data into information and ultimately into knowledge for use by higher order applications within a system. Figure 1 the primary operations model for Data in Motion (DMo).

Figure 1. Cisco® Data in Motion (DMo)

Features and Benefits

Cisco® Data in Motion (DMo) is based on a highly available, scalable, and extensible architecture designed to support a production network. Table 1 summarizes the main features and benefits of Cisco® Data in Motion.

Feature Benefit
Extensible, modular architecture
  • Capability to add, update, and delete rules without the need to restart Cisco DMo
  • Bitwise southbound payload mapping for protocol normalization
Standardized APIs
  • Consistent management and protocol normalization through RESTful northbound APIs
Flexible southbound data gathering
  • Ability to create triggered endpoint data request or direct network capture
Multiprotocol support
  • Support for triggered HTTP GET interfaces from intelligent sensors
  • Support UDP and TCP packet level data acquisition
  • Support binary translation into pre-defined schemas
Security
  • Support northbound encryption for unencrypted sensors data
  • Consistent to operate behind firewall for best sensor protection
  • Support translation sensor data from LAN to WAN
Local Caching
  • Support local caching based on dynamic time and size
Data Filtering
  • Support data filtering on meta data and payload content
  • Support for name-value-pair analysis within ASCII streams in JSON, CSV, xml, and txt formats

Cisco® Data in Motion is being built into solutions by Cisco®, Cisco® customer and Cisco® Partners. Data In Motion provides a restful API for building it into applications. Data in motion is configurable by these applications to analyze data as it enters and travels over the network. Examples of the analysis can include:

  • Finding specific data of interest
  • Summarizing the data in a defined way
  • Process the data to generate new result data
  • Other application defined analysis

      • Data in Motion is designed to be deployed and to operate in a distributed manner in order to manage and control the flood of data from IoT sensors and data sources.

      Software Packaging and Installation

      Table 2: Software Packaging and Installation for Cisco® Data in Motion on Cisco UCS E and C Series Software Packaging and Installation
      Package Description
      Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
      • Downloadable OVF virtual appliance in the form of a single file with the extension .OVA
      • Deployed with OVF templates and packages
      Table 3: Deployment Requirements for Cisco® Video Surveillance Manager on Cisco UCS C and E Series
      Package Description
      Hypervisor and hypervisor management VMware ESXi 5.0 or 5.0.1
      Resources per VM 1.00 GHz or greater, 2 vCPU, 4-GB vRAM
      Performance per VM Up to 50 sensors with one rule per sensor simultaneously operating
      Max VMs Dedicated physical core to vCPU; Overprovisioning of CPU resources not supported.
      Storage Minimum of 23GB

      Supported Platforms

      Table 4 lists the platforms that the Cisco® Data in Motion supports.

      Table 4: Platforms supported by Cisco Data in Motion
      Part Number Description
      UCS C-Series Please refer to Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers
      UCS E-series Please refer to Cisco UCS E-Series.