Citrix XenServer

The Citrix XenServer server virtualization solution now includes support for the sFlow standard, delivering the lightweight, scalable performance monitoring solution needed to optimize workloads, isolate performance problems and charge for services. The sFlow standard is widely supported by data center switch vendors: using sFlow to monitor the virtual servers provides an integrated view of network and system performance and reduces costs by eliminating layers of monitoring (see Management silos).

This article describes the steps to enable sFlow in a XenServer environment. The latest XenServer release, XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 (a.k.a. "Cowley"), includes the Open vSwitch and these instructions apply specifically to this release. If you are interested in enabling sFlow on an older version of XenServer, you will need to manually install the Open vSwitch (see How to Install Open vSwitch on Citrix XenServer).

First, enable the Open vSwitch by opening a console and typing the following commands:

xe-switch-network-backend openvswitch
reboot

Note: There are many good reasons to enable the Open vSwitch as your default switch. In addition to sFlow support, the Open vSwitch implements the OpenFlow protocol, providing distributed switching and network virtualization functionality (see The Citrix Blog: The Open vSwitch - Key Ingredient of Enterprise Ready Clouds).

The article, Configuring Open vSwitch, describes the steps to manually configure sFlow monitoring. However, manual configuration is not recommended since additional configuration is required every time a bridge is added to the vSwitch, or the system is rebooted.

The Host sFlow agent automatically configures the Open vSwitch and provides additional performance information from the physical and virtual machines (see Cloud-scale performance monitoring).

Download the Host sFlow agent and install it on your server using the following commands:

rpm -Uvh hsflowd_XenServer_56FP1-XXX.rpm
service hsflowd start
service sflowovsd start

The following steps configure all the sFlow agents to sample packets at 1-in-512, poll counters every 20 seconds and send sFlow to an analyzer (10.0.0.50) over UDP using the default sFlow port (6343).

Note: A previous posting discussed the selection of sampling rates.

The default configuration method used for sFlow is DNS-SD; enter the following DNS settings in the site DNS server:

analyzer A 10.0.0.50

_sflow._udp SRV 0 0 6343 analyzer
_sflow._udp TXT (
"txtvers=1"
"polling=20"
"sampling=512"
)

Note: These changes must be made to the DNS zone file corresponding to the search domain in the XenServer /etc/resolv.conf file. If you need to add a search domain to the DNS settings, do not edit the resolv.conf file directly since the changes will be lost on a system reboot, instead either follow the directions in How to Add a Permanent Search Domain Entry in the Resolv.conf File of a XenServer Host, or simply edit the DNSSD_domain setting in hsflowd.conf to specify the domain to use to retrieve DNS-SD settings.

Once the sFlow settings are added to the DNS server, they will be automatically picked up by the Host sFlow agents. If you need to change the sFlow settings, simply change them on the DNS server and the change will automatically be applied to all the XenServer systems in the data center.

Manual configuration is an option if you do not want to use DNS-SD. Edit the Host sFlow agent configuration file, /etc/hsflowd.conf, on each Xenserver:

sflow{
  DNSSD = off
  polling = 20
  sampling = 512
  collector{
    ip = 10.0.0.50
    udpport = 6343
  }
}

After editing the configuration file you will need to restart the Host sFlow agent:

service hsflowd restart

An sFlow analyzer is needed to receive the sFlow data and report on performance (see Choosing an sFlow analyzer). The free sFlowTrend analyzer is a great way to get started, see sFlowTrend adds server performance monitoring to see examples.

Feb. 23, 2011 Update: The Host sFlow agent is now available as a XenServer supplemental pack. For installation instructions see XenServer supplemental pack.