Owner's Manual

Middlebox Policy

A middlebox (also known as a network appliance) is a networking device that changes, inspects, filters, or

otherwise processes traffic for purposes other than packet forwarding. Some examples of middleboxes

include firewalls that filter unwanted or malicious traffic and network address translators that modify the

source and destination addresses of packets. To create a middlebox policy, specify the IP address of the

current destination and the IP address of the middlebox where traffic is redirected. The only action in a

middlebox policy is redirect.

Filter Policy

A filter policy can be a network or endpoint policy. If you create a filter policy on a network or endpoint,

define if traffic from the specified network or endpoint is permitted, blocked, or redirected. If you apply a

filter policy to egress traffic, you must send the bidirectional traffic to the switch. If the switch receives

only one-way traffic from the source to the destination and traffic to the destination is blocked, the

policy is inoperable unless traffic is sent from the destination to the source as well. You must associate a

destination endpoint that is attached to the fabric to apply the policy.

Statistics

The software provides statistics for the switches and the controller using different types of counters. A

counter provides statistical information for the entities in the infrastructure.

• The software’s home page displays statistical information related to the system, provider, and tenants.

• The global system statistics provide the counter information for switches, providers, flows, and

uplinks.

The provider and tenant statistics provide counter information for resources such as networks, endpoints,

and policies. The system counters track the total number of flows. If the source or destination of a

specific flow matches the endpoints in the provider or tenants, you can associate the flow with a specific

tenant or provider. If a resource is associated with both the tenant and the provider, the counter

information for the specified resource is stored in the tenant statistics.

Table 1. Statistic Types and Descriptions

Information Type Description

Switch aggregate statistics Displays counter information for each switch in the

infrastructure or for all switches together. The

information provided includes packet count, byte

count, and flow count. You can clear the counters

for all switches or for a switch specified by IP

address.

Switch port statistics Displays transmit and receive statistics for each

port in the switch.

Database cluster counters Displays statistics for the database server node

cluster.

Database node counters Displays statistics for the database server node.

Active Fabric Features