Dell PowerEdge FN I/O Module Configuration Guide 9.10(0.0)

sFlow is a standard-based sampling technology embedded within switches and routers which is used to monitor network traffic. It is designed to provide traffic monitoring for high-speed networks with many switches and routers. sFlow uses two types of sampling:

• Statistical packet-based sampling of switched or routed packet flows.
• Time-based sampling of interface counters.

The sFlow monitoring system consists of an sFlow agent (embedded in the switch/router) and an sFlow collector. The sFlow agent resides anywhere within the path of the packet and combines the flow samples and interface counters into sFlow datagrams and forwards them to the sFlow collector at regular intervals. The datagrams consist of information on, but not limited to, packet header, ingress and egress interfaces, sampling parameters, and interface counters.

Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) typically complete packet sampling. sFlow collector analyses the sFlow datagrams received from different devices and produces a network-wide view of traffic flows.