sFlow Configuration Example

In a service provider environment, you can configure sFlow to sample packets at the edge of the network to determine the hourly usage for each IP address in the data center.

You can capture web traffic, FTP traffic, mail traffic, and all bits of data that travel across service providers‘ edge routers to their customers‘ (end users‘) servers.

The example in this section assumes that you already have an sFlow data collector installed somewhere in your network. In many environments, the sFlow data collector is on a network PC.

The following sFlow configuration example performs the following tasks in a service provider environment:

  • Configures the IP address of the sFlow data collector.

    Note

    Note

    In many environments, the sFlow data collector is not directly connected to the switch. Make sure to specify the VR used to forward traffic between the sFlow collector and the switch. In most cases the VR is VR-Mgmt.
  • Configures the sampling rate on an edge port.
  • Enables sFlow on the edge port.
  • Enables sFlow globally on the switch.
configure sflow collector 10.127.11.88 vr vr-mgmt
configure sflow ports 5:21 sample-rate 8192
enable sflow ports 5:21 egress
enable sflow

Here is sample output for the configuration:

SFLOW Global Configuration   
Global Status: enabled   
Polling interval: 20   
Sampling rate: 8192   
Maximum cpu sample limit: 2000   
SFLOW Configured Agent IP: 0.0.0.0 
Operational Agent IP: 10.127.11.88   
Collectors      
SFLOW Port  Configuration Port Status  Sample-rate Subsampling Sflow-type 
Config / Actual factor Ingress/Egress
5:21    enabled          8192 / 8192  1          Disabled / Enabled