Netflow and Clickhouse Integration
Powerful performance with an easy integration, powered by Telegraf, the open source data connector built by InfluxData.
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Table of Contents
Powerful Performance, Limitless Scale
Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-velocity data. Any data is more valuable when you think of it as time series data. with InfluxDB, the #1 time series platform built to scale with Telegraf.
See Ways to Get Started
Input and output integration overview
The Netflow plugin is designed to collect traffic flow data from devices using the Netflow v5, v9 and IPFIX protocols. By capturing detailed flow information, this plugin supports network observability and analysis, enabling administrators to monitor traffic patterns and performance metrics effectively.
Telegraf’s SQL plugin sends collected metrics to an SQL database using a straightforward table schema and dynamic column generation. When configured for ClickHouse, it adjusts DSN formatting and type conversion settings to ensure seamless data integration.
Integration details
Netflow
The Netflow plugin serves as a collector for flow data using protocols such as Netflow v5, Netflow v9, and IPFIX. This plugin allows users to gather important flow metrics from devices that support these protocols, including a variety of operational insights about traffic patterns, source/destination information, and protocol usage. The plugin leverages templates sent by flow devices to decode incoming data correctly, and it supports private enterprise number mappings for vendor-specific information. With features like adjustable service addresses and buffer sizes, the plugin provides flexibility in how it can be deployed within various network architectures, making it an essential tool for network monitoring and analysis.
Clickhouse
Telegraf’s SQL plugin is engineered to write metric data into an SQL database by dynamically creating tables and columns based on incoming metrics. When configured for ClickHouse, it utilizes the clickhouse-go v1.5.4 driver, which employs a unique DSN format and a set of specialized type conversion rules to map Telegraf’s data types directly to ClickHouse’s native types. This approach ensures optimal storage and retrieval performance in high-throughput environments, making it well-suited for real-time analytics and large-scale data warehousing. The dynamic schema creation and precise type mapping enable detailed time-series data logging, crucial for monitoring modern, distributed systems.
Configuration
Netflow
[[inputs.netflow]]
## Address to listen for netflow,ipfix or sflow packets.
## example: service_address = "udp://:2055"
## service_address = "udp4://:2055"
## service_address = "udp6://:2055"
service_address = "udp://:2055"
## Set the size of the operating system's receive buffer.
## example: read_buffer_size = "64KiB"
## Uses the system's default if not set.
# read_buffer_size = ""
## Protocol version to use for decoding.
## Available options are
## "ipfix" -- IPFIX / Netflow v10 protocol (also works for Netflow v9)
## "netflow v5" -- Netflow v5 protocol
## "netflow v9" -- Netflow v9 protocol (also works for IPFIX)
## "sflow v5" -- sFlow v5 protocol
# protocol = "ipfix"
## Private Enterprise Numbers (PEN) mappings for decoding
## This option allows to specify vendor-specific mapping files to use during
## decoding.
# private_enterprise_number_files = []
## Log incoming packets for tracing issues
# log_level = "trace"
Clickhouse
[[outputs.sql]]
## Database driver
## Valid options include mssql, mysql, pgx, sqlite, snowflake, clickhouse
driver = "clickhouse"
## Data source name
## For ClickHouse, the DSN follows the clickhouse-go v1.5.4 format.
## Example DSN: "tcp://localhost:9000?debug=true"
data_source_name = "tcp://localhost:9000?debug=true"
## Timestamp column name
timestamp_column = "timestamp"
## Table creation template
## Available template variables:
## {TABLE} - table name as a quoted identifier
## {TABLELITERAL} - table name as a quoted string literal
## {COLUMNS} - column definitions (list of quoted identifiers and types)
table_template = "CREATE TABLE {TABLE} ({COLUMNS})"
## Table existence check template
## Available template variables:
## {TABLE} - table name as a quoted identifier
table_exists_template = "SELECT 1 FROM {TABLE} LIMIT 1"
## Initialization SQL (optional)
init_sql = ""
## Maximum amount of time a connection may be idle. "0s" means connections are never closed due to idle time.
connection_max_idle_time = "0s"
## Maximum amount of time a connection may be reused. "0s" means connections are never closed due to age.
connection_max_lifetime = "0s"
## Maximum number of connections in the idle connection pool. 0 means unlimited.
connection_max_idle = 2
## Maximum number of open connections to the database. 0 means unlimited.
connection_max_open = 0
## Metric type to SQL type conversion for ClickHouse.
## The conversion maps Telegraf metric types to ClickHouse native data types.
[outputs.sql.convert]
conversion_style = "literal"
integer = "Int64"
text = "String"
timestamp = "DateTime"
defaultvalue = "String"
unsigned = "UInt64"
bool = "UInt8"
real = "Float64"
Input and output integration examples
Netflow
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Traffic Analysis and Visualization: Use the Netflow plugin to collect traffic flow data and visualize it in real-time using an analytics platform. Administrators can create dashboards that display traffic patterns and anomalies, helping them understand bandwidth usage and user behavior.
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Network Performance Optimization: Integrate the Netflow plugin with performance monitoring tools to identify bottlenecks and optimize the network. Analyze collected metrics to pinpoint areas where network resources can be improved, enhancing overall system performance.
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Anomaly Detection for Security: Leverage the Netflow data for security analysis by feeding it into an anomaly detection system. This can help identify unusual traffic patterns that may indicate potential security threats, enabling quicker responses to prevent breaches.
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Customized Alerts for Network Events: Configure threshold-based alerts using the Netflow plugin metrics to notify network administrators of unusual spikes or drops in traffic. This proactive monitoring can help in quickly addressing potential issues before they escalate.
Clickhouse
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Real-Time Analytics for High-Volume Data: Use the plugin to feed streaming metrics from large-scale systems into ClickHouse. This setup supports ultra-fast query performance and near real-time analytics, ideal for monitoring high-traffic applications.
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Time-Series Data Warehousing: Integrate the plugin with ClickHouse to create a robust time-series data warehouse. This use case allows organizations to store detailed historical metrics and perform complex queries for trend analysis and capacity planning.
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Scalable Monitoring in Distributed Environments: Leverage the plugin to dynamically create tables per metric type in ClickHouse, making it easier to manage and query data from a multitude of distributed systems without prior schema definitions.
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Optimized Storage for IoT Deployments: Deploy the plugin to ingest data from IoT sensors into ClickHouse. Its efficient schema creation and native type mapping facilitate the handling of massive volumes of data, enabling real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance.
Feedback
Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.
Powerful Performance, Limitless Scale
Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-velocity data. Any data is more valuable when you think of it as time series data. with InfluxDB, the #1 time series platform built to scale with Telegraf.
See Ways to Get Started
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