sFlow Monitoring Template
Template built by
Telegraf Plugins used:
Included Resources:
- 1 Bucket:
sflow_data, 2d retention - Labels:
sFlow,Network Monitoring, and Telegraf Plugin Labels - 1 Telegraf Configuration
- 4 Dashboards:
sFlow - Top Talkers,sFlow - Source/Destination Traffic,sFlow - Ingress/Egress Traffic,sFlow - Bandwidth Usage - 6 Variable:
sflow_dest,agent_host,egress_interface,sflow_source,ingress_interface,sflow_metric
Quick Install
If you have your InfluxDB credentials configured in the CLI, you can install this template with:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/influxdata/community-templates/master/sflow/sflow.yml
Network monitoring with sFlow dashboard - Bandwidth Usage
Network monitoring with sFlow dashboard - Top Talkers
At its core, sFlow is a packet sampling technology that is used to monitor many different types of network devices. This can include not only routers and switches but also host devices, wireless access points, and more. Essentially, it's a tool used to analyze and manage network traffic, all in an effort to help you unlock the most important benefit of all: guaranteeing the quality of service that your users have come to both expect and deserve.
Why sFlow monitoring?
sFlow monitoring is important because it allows you to take a deeper look at network traffic patterns in an easy-to-visualize, easy-to- understand way. In general, sFlow monitoring samples network packets to help you accomplish important tasks like:
- Finding bandwidth hogs on a network to determine exactly which applications are using the most bandwidth at a given moment. This can be a great way to prioritize certain applications over others, thus increasing performance across the board.
- Detect, diagnose and resolve network performance issues. If you can proactively stop small problems today, you can prevent them from becoming much bigger (and more frustrating) ones tomorrow.
- Track response time, availability and uptime of critical assets like routers, switches, and other SNMP-enabled devices.
- Monitor and analyze network bandwidth performance and traffic patterns. This can again help you make changes and optimize your resources to account for traffic fluctuations and similar issues.
How to use sFlow Monitoring Template
Provided that you have your InfluxDB credentials configured in the CLI, you can install the SFlow monitoring template via the following command:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/influxdata/community-templates/master/sflow/sflow.yml
Note that while the data for your new dashboard will be populated entirely by the included Telegraf configuration (which includes the sFlow input), you may still need to customize the input configuration depending on your needs. You'll likely want to specify a new service_address value, for example, depending on where those SFlow packets are coming from.
To learn more about customizing the input configuration, consult the following link.
Key sFlow monitoring metrics to monitor
The sFlow Monitoring Template allows you to take a closer look at a number of important performance-related metrics, including ones like:
- Bandwidth by source
- Bandwidth by destination
- Bandwidth by source port
- Bandwidth by destination port
You can also gain better visibility into your "top talkers" in sFlow, sorting things based on factors like bytes, packets, and records. All of these "top talkers" are listed by their IP address so that you can easily tell one from another.
Related Resources
Network performance monitoring
This is a solution blueprint on how to maintain a responsive and performant network no matter how distributed your resources are.
InfluxDB Templates documentation
Create your own awesome InfluxDB Template in 5 minutes.
Network monitoring with sFlow
sFlow is an industry standard used for network monitoring. It defines a packet sampling (not all traffic) technology to provide continuous statistics on any protocol (L2, L3, L4, and up to L7).