Administrator Guide
sFlow
The Dell Networking Operating System (OS) supports sFlow version 5.
Topics:
• Overview
• Implementation Information
• Enabling and Disabling sFlow
• Enabling and Disabling sFlow on an Interface
• Enabling sFlow Max-Header Size Extended
• sFlow Show Commands
• Conguring Specify Collectors
• Changing the Polling Intervals
• Back-O Mechanism
• sFlow on LAG ports
Overview
sFlow is a standard-based sampling technology embedded within switches and routers which is used to monitor network trac.
It is designed to provide trac 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 ows.
• 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 ow samples and interface counters into sFlow datagrams and forwards them to
the sFlow collector at regular intervals. The datagrams consist of information on, but not limited to, packet header, ingress and egress
interfaces, sampling parameters, and interface counters.
Application-specic integrated circuits (ASICs) typically complete packet sampling. sFlow collector analyses the sFlow datagrams received
from dierent devices and produces a network-wide view of trac ows.
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