Deployment Guide

Limitations of Top Talker monitors
Be aware of the following when using Top Talker monitors:
• Top Talker monitors cannot detect transient surges in traffic through a given flow.
• You cannot install a Top Talker monitor on a mirrored port.
• Top Talker monitors can monitor only 10,000 flows at a time.
• Top Talker monitors are not supported on VE_Ports, EX_Ports, and VEX_Ports.
• The maximum number of all port mode Top Talker monitors on an ASIC is 16. If Virtual Fabrics is
enabled, the maximum number of all port mode Top Talker monitors on an ASIC is 8.
• If the ingress and egress monitor ports are configured on the same ASIC, port mode Top Talker
monitors on F_Ports show the flow from only one of the ports, either the ingress or the egress port,
but not both.
Adding a Top Talker monitor to a port (port mode)
1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account with admin permissions.
2. Enter the perfTTmon --add command.
perfttmon --add [egress | ingress] [slotnumber/]port
The following example monitors the incoming traffic on port 7.
perfttmon --add ingress 7
The following example monitors the outgoing traffic on slot 2, port 4 on a Backbone.
perfttmon --add egress 2/4
Adding Top Talker monitors on all switches in the fabric (fabric mode)
When fabric mode is enabled, you can no longer install Top Talker monitors on an F_Port unless you
disable fabric mode.
1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account with admin permissions.
2. Remove any EE monitors in the fabric, as described in Deleting EE monitors on page 496. Fabric
mode Top Talker monitors and EE monitors cannot both exist in the fabric.
3. Enter the perfTTmon --add fabricmode command.
perfttmon --add fabricmode
The system responds with the following message:
Before enabling fabric mode, please remove all EE monitors in the fabric
continue? (yes, y, no, n):
4. Enter y at the prompt to continue.
Top Talker monitors are added to E_Ports in the fabric and fabric mode is enabled. Any Top Talker
monitors that were already installed on F_Ports are automatically uninstalled.
If EE monitors are present on the local switch, the command fails with the following message:
Cannot install Fabric Mode Top Talker because EE monitor is already present
If EE monitors are present on remote switches, the command succeeds; however, on the remote
switches, fabric mode fails and a RASlog message is displayed on those switches.
Limitations of Top Talker monitors
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