Net/FSE will support sFlow in future releases. In the meantime, follow these instructions to convert sFlow data streams into NetFlow data streams for real-time integration into Net/FSE.

InMon (http://www.inmon.com) has an excellent collection of sFlow processing tools for UNIX systems. Using InMon's sflowtool, sFlow data streams can be converted into NetFlow datagrams. Once converted, the sFlow data is treated as NetFlow data by Net/FSE. Follow the steps below to configure sflowtools to stream data to Net/FSE:

-- Configuring a NetFlow Sensor --

1. Log in to the Net/FSE web interface as an administrator.

2. From the Configuration tab, click the Add link under Sensors and create a new sensor of type "NetFlow".

3. Click the Add link in the NetFlow Configurations section. Select the sensor you just created and assign an unused UDP port (over 1024).

4. Restart Net/FSE: /etc/init.d/nfse stop ; /etc/init.d/nfse start

-- Setting up sFlow --

1. Log in to the server you will be collecting sFlow data from. This can be the Net/FSE server. If not, the server must be able to connect over the network to the Net/FSE server on the UDP port specified in step #3 above.

2. Download the sflowtools source code from InMon (using wget or such): [www.inmon.com]

3. tar -xzf sflowtool-3.12.tar.gz

4. cd sflowtool-3.12

5. ./configure
6. make
- If either step 5 or 6 fails you may not have the required build tools (gcc, make, libpcap development files) installed. Install these packages and try again.

7. ./sflowtool -p SFLOW_PORT -c NETFSE_IP -d NETFLOW_PORT
- SFLOW_PORT: the port on which the server will listen for sFlow data streams
- NETFSE_IP: the IP address (or hostname) of the Net/FSE server. Use “localhost” or “127.0.0.1” if running sflowtool on the NetFSE server.
- NETFLOW_PORT: the port the Net/FSE server is configured to collect NetFlow on for the selected sensor (from step #3 under “Configuring a NetFlow Sensor” above)

8. Configure your sFlow-capable devices to send sFlow streams to the server running sflowtools. If you don’t have an sFlow enabled device, you can create sFlow data streams using InMon’s sFlow Agent: [www.inmon.com].

______________________
Ben Uphoff
Packet Analytics