Reference Guide

sFlow | 819

sFlow

Configuring sFlow is supported on the S5000 switch.

This chapter covers the following information:

• Overview

• Implementation Information

• Enabling and Disabling sFlow

• Enabling and Disabling on an Interface

• sFlow Show Commands

• Specifying Collectors

• Polling Intervals

• Back-off Mechanism

• sFlow on LAG ports

Overview

Dell networking OS supports sFlow version 5. sFlow is a standard-based sampling technology embedded

within switches and routers which is used to monitor network traffic. It is designed to provide traffic

monitoring for high speed networks with many switches and routers. sFlow uses two types of sampling:

• Statistical packet-based sampling of switched or routed packet flows

• Time-based sampling of interface counters

The sFlow monitoring system consists of an sFlow Agent (embedded in the switch/router) and an sFlow

collector. The sFlow Agent resides anywhere within the path of the packet, and combines the flow samples

and interface counters into sFlow datagrams and forwards them to the sFlow Collector at regular intervals.

The datagrams consists of information on, but not limited to, packet header, ingress and egress interfaces,

sampling parameters, and interface counters.

Packet sampling is typically done by the ASIC. sFlow Collector analyses the sFlow datagrams received

from different devices and produces a network-wide view of traffic flows.