Users Guide

20
Port Monitoring
The port monitoring feature allows you to monitor network trac by forwarding a copy of each incoming or outgoing packet from
one port to another port.
Important Points to Remember
Port monitoring is supported on physical ports only. Port-channel interfaces and virtual local area networks (VLANs), are not
supported.
The monitoring (destination, “MG”) and monitored (source, “MD”) ports must be on the same switch.
The monitored (source) interface must be a server-facing interface in the format slot/port, where valid slot numbers are 0-1 and
server-facing port numbers are from 1 to 32. The monitoring interface must be an uplink port in the chassis.
Dell Networking OS permits a limited set of commands for monitoring ports. To display these commands, use the ? command.
Only one MG and one MD may be in a single port-pipe.
A monitoring port may not be a member of a VLAN.
There may only be one destination port in a monitoring session.
A source port (MD) can only be monitored by one destination port (MG). If you try to assign a monitored port to more than one
monitoring port, the following error is displayed as shown in example.
Example
Dell(conf)#mon ses 1
Dell(conf-mon-sess-1)#source tengig 0/0 destination tengig 0/60 direction
both
Dell(conf-mon-sess-1)#do show mon ses
SessionID Source Destination Direction Mode Type
--------- ------ ----------- --------- ---- ----
1 TenGig 0/0 TenGig 0/60 both interface
Port-based
Dell(conf-mon-sess-1)#mon ses 2
Dell(conf-mon-sess-2)#source tengig 0/0 destination tengig 0/61 direction
both
% Error: MD port is already being monitored.
NOTE: There is no limit to the number of monitoring sessions per system, provided that there are only four destination
ports per port-pipe. If each monitoring session has a unique destination port, the maximum number of session is four per
port-pipe.
description
Enter a description of this monitoring session.
Syntax
description {description}
To remove the description, use the no description {description} command.
268
Port Monitoring