Monday, August 9, 2010

Host sFlow 1.0 Released

(image from Host sFlow)

The Host sFlow project has released an open source agent implementing the sFlow Host Structures specification. The current stable release (version 1.0) supports: Linux, Windows, XenServer and Xen. The project is working to add support for additional platforms, including: AIX, HPUX, OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, VMWare, KVM and Hyper-V.

The Host sFlow agent provides a highly scalable solution for monitoring clusters of servers (see Top servers and Cluster performance). The combination of sFlow in top of rack (ToR) or end of row (EoR) switches and Host sFlow agents installed on servers delivers visibility into the performance of large scale data center workloads (see Hybrid server monitoring).

The combination of Open vSwitch and the Host sFlow agent provide a lightweight, scalable, performance monitoring solution for open source virtualization (Xen, XenServer and KVM) and cloud platforms (OpenStack and Xen Cloud Platform).

The sFlow Host Structures specification has only recently been finalized. When looking for an sFlow analyzer (see Choosing an sFlow analyzer), ask if the vendor supports all optional and extended sFlow fields (including packet headersinterface counters and host structures). If possible, arrange for an evaluation and test the solution in a large scale trial.

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