Configuring The Packet Capture And Gigastor Buffer Size; Generating Netflow Records From The Gigastor's Netflow Agent - Network Instruments GigaStor User Manual

3. Click the General Options tab. See
4. Enable these two options:
Track statistics information per physical port
Use physical port selections to filter statistics

Configuring the packet capture and GigaStor buffer size

Allows you to set the amount of RAM that Observer will dedicate to the capture buffer cache for this instance.
This configuration value has been pre-set for optimum performance given a single active GigaStor monitoring
instance. The default settings allows enough memory to set up a number of passive GigaStor instances.
If you wish to run multiple active monitoring instances to watch multiple links or networks, you can decrease
the capture buffer size dedicated to GigaStor collection, which frees some memory for creating other probe
collection instances. Inadequate memory allocation to GigaStor collection can affect performance and result in
dropped packets during high load periods.
A GigaStor Instance can be as large as the physical memory installed on your system after subtracting the
memory dedicated to Windows and other probe instances.
To change the allocation for this probe instance, click the Configure button, which will display the probe
instance, Memory and Security Administration dialog.
In all cases, the actual buffer size (Max Buffer Size) is also reduced by 7% for memory management purposes.
Should you try to exceed the Max Buffer Size an error dialog will be displayed indicating the minimum and
maximum buffer size for your Observer (or probe) buffer.

Generating NetFlow records from the GigaStor's NetFlow Agent

The GigaStor probe has the ability to publish any NetFlow flows generated by its network adapter using the
NetFlow Agent, including flows from any virtual adapter on the Gen2 card. The data outputs for NetFlow are
sent to a NetFlow collector for further analysis.
All NetFlow flows generated by the GigaStor probe are template-based using the Cisco NetFlow v9 templates.
See the Cisco documentation
the flow records. The GigaStor generates the flows adhering to the NetFlow v9 standards.
Only NetFlow version 9 and higher 10 (also known as IPFIX) are supported by the NetFlow Agent.
1. Choose Capture > GigaStor Control Panel.
2. Click the Settings button to open the GigaStor Settings dialog.
3. Click the NetFlow Agent tab.
4. Select Enable NetFlow Agent option.
5. In the Destinations section, click Add and type the IP address of the system with your NetFlow collector. By
default port 9996 is used for NetFlow. Change it if needed.
6. Enable the various data outputs and how frequently you want the template published. The GigaStor collects
the datagram information continuously and publishes it every 15 seconds (the GigaStor's fixed collection
interval).
is now configured to publish NetFlow records to the NetFlow collector of your choice. This could also be a
GigaStor probe.
7. To view the NetFlow records in the GigaStor Control Panel, choose File > Load and Analyze Observer
Capture Buffer. Find the buffer file you want and open it.
Table 1 for a description of each field of the GigaStor General Options tab.
for details about the NetFlow flow-based record formats and what is contained in
Configuring the packet capture and GigaStor buffer size | 15