Dell Force10 S55T S55 Configuration Guide FTOS 8.3.5.3 - Page 669

37 sFlow c e s Configuring sFlow is supported on platforms • Enable and Disable sFlow on page 671 • sFlow Show Commands on page 672 • Specify Collectors on page 674 • Polling Intervals on page 674 • Sampling Rate on page 674 • Back-off Mechanism on page 676 • sFlow on LAG ports on page 676 • Extended sFlow on page 676 Overview FTOS supports sFlow version 5. sFlow is a standard-based sampling technology embedded within switches and routers which is used to monitor network traffic. It is designed to provide traffic 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 flows • 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 flow samples and interface counters into sFlow datagrams and forwards them to the sFlow Collector at regular intervals. The datagrams consists of information on, but not limited to, packet header, ingress and egress interfaces, sampling parameters, and interface counters. Packet sampling is typically done by the ASIC. sFlow Collector analyses the sFlow datagrams received from different devices and produces a network-wide view of traffic flows. sFlow | 669