Users Guide

sFlow
The Dell EMC Networking OS supports sFlow commands.
The Dell EMC Networking OS sFlow monitoring system includes an sFlow Agent and an sFlow Collector.
● The sFlow Agent combines the flow samples and interface counters into sFlow datagrams and forwards them to the sFlow
Collector.
● The sFlow Collector analyses the sFlow Datagrams received from the different devices and produces a network-wide view of
traffic flows.
Important Points to Remember
● Dell EMC Networking recommends that the sFlow Collector be connected to the Dell EMC Networking chassis through a line
card port rather than the route processor module (RPM) Management Ethernet port.
● Dell EMC Networking OS exports all sFlow packets to the sFlow Collector. A small sampling rate can equate to many
exported packets. A backoff mechanism is automatically applied to reduce this amount. Some sampled packets may be
dropped when the exported packet rate is high and the backoff mechanism is about to or is starting to take effect. The
dropEvent counter, in the sFlow packet, is always zero.
● sFlow sampling is done on a per-port basis.
● Community list and local preference fields are not filled up in the extended gateway element in the sFlow datagram.
● The 802.1P source priority field is not filled up in the extended switch element in the sFlow datagram.
● Only Destination and Destination Peer AS numbers are packed in the dst-as-path field in the extended gateway element.
● If the packet being sampled is redirected using policy-based routing (PBR), the sFlow datagram may contain incorrect
extended gateway/router information.
● sFlow does not support packing extended information for IPv6 packets. Only the first 128 bytes of the IPv6 packet is
shipped in the datagram.
● The source virtual local area network (VLAN) field in the extended switch element is not packed if there is a routed packet.
● The destination VLAN field in the extended switch element is not packed if there is a multicast packet.
● The maximum number of packets that can be sampled and processed per second is:
○ 7500 packets when no extended information packing is enabled.
○ 7500 packets when only extended-switch information packing is enabled (see sflow extended-switch enable).
Topics:
• sflow collector
• sflow enable (Global)
• sflow enable (Interface)
• sflow ingress-enable
• sflow extended-switch enable
• sflow max-header-size extended
• sflow polling-interval (Global)
• sflow polling-interval (Interface)
• sflow sample-rate (Global)
• sflow sample-rate (Interface)
• show sflow
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sFlow 1515