思科收购 eBPF 网络初创公司 Isovalent

思科系统公司（Cisco Systems Inc）将收购基于开源 eBPF 工具开发网络软件的初创公司 Isovalent。

Cisco announced the deal today without disclosing the financial terms. The acquisition comes about two years after the networking giant backed a million funding round for Isovalent alongside Google LLC and Andreessen Horowitz.

思科今天宣布了这一交易，但没有透露财务条款。网络巨头思科与谷歌公司（Google LLC）和 Andreessen Horowitz约两年前曾一起为 Isovalent 公司提供了 2900 万美元的融资。

A server’s operating system is involved in practically all the actions that the applications running on top perform. As a result, it has extensive visibility into those workloads’ activity, which is useful for monitoring purposes. Developers can harness an operating system such as Linux to detect application performance issues, cybersecurity risks and other technical problems.

服务器的操作系统几乎总是参与在操作系统里运行的应用程序的所有操作。因此，操作系统对这些工作负载的活动具有广泛的可见性，这自然对监控目的非常有用。开发人员可以利用诸如 Linux 一类的操作系统检测应用程序性能问题、网络安全风险和其他技术问题。

Using Linux for workload monitoring was historically a highly complicated and error-prone process. To address the challenge, a group of developers released an open-source tool called eBPF in 2014. The tool significantly reduced the amount of effort required to turn Linux into a monitoring tool, which helped make the practice fairly widespread in public cloud environments.

不过利用 Linux 进行工作负载监控在过去却是一个非常复杂且容易出错的过程。一群开发人员为了应对这一挑战于 2014 年发布了一款名为 eBPF 的开源工具。eBPF工具大大减少了将 Linux 转换为监控工具所需的工作量，有助于使利用 Linux 进行工作负载监控的做法在公共云环境中得到相当广泛的应用。

Isovalent is a major contributor to eBPF. It’s also the developer of two other open-source projects, Cilium and Tetragon, that extend the tool’s feature set with additional capabilities.

Isovalent 是 eBPF 的主要贡献者。Isovalent 也是另外两个开源项目 Cilium 和 Tetragon 的开发者。 Cilium 和 Tetragon 两个项目通过附加功能扩展eBPF 工具的功能集。

Cilium helps organizations manage the flow of network traffic among their software containers. It includes an automated latency reduction mechanism, tools for tracking connection speeds and a load balancer that ensures traffic is evenly spread out among containers. There are also cybersecurity features that ease tasks such as encrypting network traffic.

Cilium 可以帮助企业管理软件容器之间的网络流量。Cilium 包括自动减少延迟机制、跟踪连接速度的工具以及确保流量在容器间均匀分布的负载平衡器。此外，Cilium 还具有一些网络安全功能，可以简化诸如网络流量加密等任务。

Tetragon, Isovalent’s other open-source project, complements Cilium by providing additional cybersecurity capabilities. It can monitor a container environment for malicious activity such as attempts to weaken a server’s cybersecurity settings. Additionally, Tetragon blocks unnecessary connections between containers that could be used by hackers to steal data or spread malware.

Isovalent 的另一个开源项目 Tetragon 通过提供额外的网络安全功能对 Cilium 进行补充。Tetragon 可以监控容器环境中的恶意活动，例如试图削弱服务器的网络安全设置。此外，Tetragon 还能阻止容器之间不必要的连接，黑客可能会利用这些不必要的连接窃取数据或传播恶意软件。

Cisco will use Isovalent’s open-source technology to extend its cybersecurity portfolio. Another focus of the acquisition is Cilium Mesh, a commercial tool built by Isovalent to help enterprises connect applications running in cloud, on-premises and at the edge with one another. Cisco hinted that it plans to combine Cilium Mesh with its software-defined networking products.

思科将利用 Isovalent 的开源技术扩展旗下的网络安全产品组合。此次收购的另一个重点是 Cilium Mesh。Cilium Mesh 是 Isovalent公司开发的一款商业工具，可以帮助企业将运行在云端、企业内部和边缘的应用相互连接起来。思科暗示计划将 Cilium Mesh 与旗下的软件定义网络产品进行结合。

“Imagine in today’s distributed environment – of applications, virtual machines, containers and cloud assets – having security controls with total visibility, without hindering networking and application performance,” said Jeetu Patel, the executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’s security and collaboration group. “The combination of Cisco and Isovalent will make this a reality.”

思科安全与协作部执行副总裁兼总经理Jeetu Patel表示， “可以想象一下，在当今的包括应用、虚拟机、容器和云资产的分布式环境中能够具有完全的可视性的安全控制，同时又不会妨碍网络和应用性能。思科和 Isovalent 的强强联手将使这一目标成为现实。”

The networking giant has committed to “nurturing, investing in, and contributing to” eBPF, Cilium and Tetragon. Cisco will establish an independent advisory board to oversee its contributions to the projects.

网络巨头思科称将致力于“培育、投资和促进”eBPF、Cilium 和 Tetragon。思科将成立一个独立的咨询委员会，监督其对这些项目的贡献。

Other major players in the enterprise technology market have also made eBPF-focused deals over the past few years. In 2020, New Relic and Splunk Inc., which is currently being acquired by Cisco, both bought startups that had built products based on the Linux monitoring technology. Elastic NV made a similar acquisition the following year.

企业技术市场的其他主要参与者在过去几年中也进行了一些以 eBPF 为重点的交易。2020 年，New Relic 和目前正被思科收购的 Splunk 公司都收购了基于 Linux 监控技术开发产品的初创公司。Elastic NV 也在2021年进行了类似的收购。