With more enterprises looking for bandwidth and traffic analytics, Dell and DLink are 2 relatively new devices that supports sFlow export. For those who are new to sFlow, sFlow is a sampling based technology where 1 in x packets based on the sampling rate configured is send to the analyzer software for traffic analysis. The sampling rates defines the interval for which packets are taken. For eg. if the sampling rate is 256, 1 in every 256 packets is send to the analyzer software. Based on the traffic in this 1 packet, the traffic for the rest 255 is constructed.
In this post, we will provide the configuration to be applied on these devices to enable sFlow export:
Dell Device sFlow Configuration :
The following are set of command that has to be applied on Dell Devices to enable sFlow export:
sflow 1 destination NFA timeout 4294967295
sflow 1 destination 192.16.18.2 9996 – Destination server IP Addess and NetFlow listener port
sflow 1 polling ethernet 1/g1-1/g47 30 – Interfaces for polling
sflow 1 sampling ethernet 1/g1-1/g47 256 – Sampling rate set on the interfaces.
DLink Device sFlow Configuration :
The following set of commands have to be applied on DLink Devices to enable sFlow export:
enable sflow
create sflow analyzer_server <value 1-4> owner <name 16> {timeout [<sec 1-2000000 | infinite] collectoraddress <NFA Server IP> | collectorport <udp_port_number 1-65535> | maxdatagramsize <value 300-1400>}
create sflow counter_poller ports [<portlist> | all] analyzer_server_id <value 1-4> {interval [disable | <sec 20-120>]}
config sflow counter_poller ports [<portlist> | all] interval [disable | <sec 20-120>]
Example for DLink:
enable sflow
create sflow analyzer_server 1 owner MENFA {timeout infinite collector address <192.16.18.2> collector port <9996> – 192.16.18.2 is NFA server IP, 9996 is sFlow listener port and datagram size is set at default of 1400
create sflow flow_sampler ports all analyzer_server_id 1 rate 20 – Here, the actual rate is the configured rate value multiplied by 256. For example, if the rate is 20, the actual rate 5120.
create sflow counter_poller ports all analyzer_server_id 1 interval 60
We will bring in more sFlow configuration options over the next few weeks. If you have the sFlow configuration for any specific devices, feel free to let us know and we will be glad to post them in our blogs acknowledging them to you and your website link. Email your details and the configuration you have to nfs@manageengine.com
Demo | Download 30-day Trial | Twitter | Customers
Regards,
Praveen Kumar
Hello Praveen, thanks for the info.
However, when I try to input the command to set the Sampling rate on the Dell PowerConnect switches, I receive an error message:
Incorrect input! Invalid Sampler Rate
But the following command works ok:
sflow 1 sampling ethernet 1/g1 1024 256
The 1024 refers to the sampling rate (0 to Disable, or value 1024 to 65536), whereas the 256 refers to the Maximum Header Size.
(My switches are running Firmware version 3.2.1.3)
Other than that, works perfectly using the above.
Thanks