sFlow

Push

Synopsis

Creates an sFlow collector that accepts flow sampling data over UDP connections. Supports High-Volume collection with multiple workers and configurable buffer sizes.

Schema

- id: <numeric>
  name: <string>
  description: <string>
  type: sflow
  tags: <string[]>
  pipelines: <pipeline[]>
  status: <boolean>
  properties:
    address: <string>
    port: <numeric>
    reuse: <boolean>
    buffer_size: <numeric>
    stats_frequency: <numeric>

Configuration

The following are the minimum requirements to define the device.

Device

Field	Required	Default	Description
id	Y		Unique identifier
name	Y		Device name
description	N	-	Optional description
type	Y		Must be sflow
tags	N	-	Optional tags
pipelines	N	-	Optional pre-processor pipelines
status	N	true	Enable/disable the device

Network

Field	Required	Default	Description
address	N	"0.0.0.0"	Listen address
port	N	6343	Listen port
reuse	N	true	Enable socket address reuse

Performance

Field	Required	Default	Description
buffer_size	N	9000	Network read buffer size in bytes
stats_frequency	N	300	Statistics collection interval in seconds

Advanced Features

The following are unique features that Director offers.

Multiple Workers

When reuse is enabled, the collector automatically scales to use multiple worker processes based on available CPU cores. Each worker maintains its own UDP listener, processes flows independently, and writes to a dedicated queue file.

note

The collector automatically scales up to use all available CPU cores.

Flows

The collector supports interface-counter sampling, packet-flow sampling, application identification, port-based protocol mapping, flow-state tracking, and statistical aggregation.

Examples

The following are commonly used configuration types.

Basic

The minimum required configuration using defaults:

Creating a simple sFlow collector...

- id: 1 name: basic_sflow type: sflow properties: port: 6343

High-Volume

Performance can be enhanced for high flow volumes:

Optimizing for high message volumes...

- id: 2 name: performant_sflow type: sflow properties: address: "0.0.0.0" port: 6343 reuse: true buffer_size: 32768

Multiple Agents

Multiple sFlow agents can be used for collection:

Collecting from multiple network devices...

- id: 3 name: multi_agent_sflow type: sflow properties: address: "0.0.0.0" port: 6343 reuse: true buffer_size: 16384 stats_frequency: 60

warning

All sFlow agents must be configured to send to the same collector port.

Application Protocols

The collector supports application-based identification, TCP port mapping, and UDP port mapping. The definition files for these respectively are placed in three locations under <vm_root>:

• /user/definitions/app-definitions-{device-id}.csv (device-specific)
• /user/definitions/app-definitions.csv (user-defined)
• /package/definitions/app-definitions.csv (system defaults)

warning

Definition files must be in CSV format with exactly two columns per row.

The contents of these files are:

app-definitions.csv:

SSH,Secure Shell
RDP,Remote Desktop
HTTP,Web Browsing
HTTPS,Secure Web

tcp-definitions.csv:

22,SSH
3389,RDP
80,HTTP
443,HTTPS

udp-definitions.csv:

53,DNS
67,DHCP
123,NTP
161,SNMP

note

The collector will fall back on the system defaults if the custom definition files are not found.

Basic flow collection with application identification...

- id: 4 name: app_aware_sflow type: sflow properties: port: 6343 reuse: true buffer_size: 16384