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Comment: How to figure out flow volume from a cisco device

Table of Contents

Flow Volume - from Cisco Device

Cisco devices will tell you the number of flows currently exported, no matter if they were successfully received by a server or not. This can be very useful to help calculate the amount of flow data that will come from a device before sending the flows to an opFlow server.

  1. Get the current time
  2. Get the number of flows
  3. Wait 2 minutes
  4. Get the current time
  5. Get the number of flows
  6. Do some math, subtract second flow number from first flow number, that is the number of flows for 2 minutes, divide by 120 and you have the number per second.

 

Code Block
router> show clock
11:57:51.155 AEST Wed Apr 2 2014
Code Block
router>sh ip flow export 
Flow export v9 is enabled for main cache
  Export source and destination details : 
  VRF ID : Default
    Destination(1)  192.168.1.7 (12345) 
    Destination(2)  192.168.1.42 (12345) 
  Version 9 flow records
  25716317 flows exported in 890127 udp datagrams
  0 flows failed due to lack of export packet
  0 export packets were sent up to process level
  0 export packets were dropped due to no fib
  1 export packets were dropped due to adjacency issues
  0 export packets were dropped due to fragmentation failures
  0 export packets were dropped due to encapsulation fixup failures

So 25716317 have been sent.  Now wait 2 minutes, then get the time again

Code Block
router>show clock
11:59:53.155 AEST Wed Apr 2 2014

Now get the number of flows again:

Code Block
meatball>sh ip flow export 
Flow export v9 is enabled for main cache
  Export source and destination details : 
  VRF ID : Default
    Destination(1)  192.168.1.7 (12345) 
    Destination(2)  192.168.1.42 (12345) 
  Version 9 flow records
  25717645 flows exported in 890173 udp datagrams
  0 flows failed due to lack of export packet
  0 export packets were sent up to process level
  0 export packets were dropped due to no fib
  1 export packets were dropped due to adjacency issues
  0 export packets were dropped due to fragmentation failures
  0 export packets were dropped due to encapsulation fixup failures

Figure out flows / 2 min  or flows / second:

25717645 flows - 25716317 flows = 1328 flows / 2 min
1328 / 120 = 11 flows / second

The numbers you see will likely be higher, this is just an example.  Please contact support@opmantek.com if you would like help correctly sizing your server.

Flow Volume - received by opFlow

opflow_stats.pl calculates how many flows per second are being received by the server.  To view this info just run it

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