Enabling NetFlow on a vSphere Distributed Switch

NetFlow is an industry standard for network traffic monitoring. Although originally developed by Cisco, it has since become an industry standard. Once enabled, it can be used to capture IP traffic statistics on all the interfaces where NetFlow is enabled, and send them as records to the NetFlow collector software. VMware supports NetFlow version 10.

How to do it...

The following procedure will help you enable Netflow on a vSphere Distributed Switch:

1. Bring up the Networking inventory using the vSphere Web Client by using the key combination Ctrl + Alt + 5.
2. Select the desired dvSwitch and navigate to Configure | NetFlow and click Edit:

3. In the Edit NetFlow Settings window, supply a Collector IP address, Collector port, Observation Domain ID, and Switch IP address. Modify the Advanced settings if necessary. Click OK to save the settings:

4. The NetFlow screen should now show the applied settings:

5. Once done, you can Enable NetFlow on individual dvPortGroups...