How does Flow Monitor work?

When a router or other device sends flow data to Flow Monitor, it follows the process shown below.

1. The router gathers information about the traffic that is passing through it and summarizes that data into a NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow (sampled NetFlow) or IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) export datagram.
2. The router sends the flow export to Flow Monitor, which acts as a flow collector.

   Note: sFlow data is sent every x number of packets (configurable on the sFlow device), whereas all NetFlow data is collected and monitored. This means that sFlow data provides a sampling of network traffic data, whereas NetFlow data provides all network traffic data.

3. The Flow Monitor collector stores the NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow (sampled NetFlow) or IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) export in the database.
4. When the report data is viewed on the web interface, Flow Monitor retrieves the data from the database and manipulates it to produce the report.

Tip: Flow Monitor can collect and generate reports for Flow data from multiple devices.

System requirements

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor has the same base system requirements as WhatsUp Gold. In addition, WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor requires:

• WhatsUp Gold Standard Edition, Premium Edition, MSP Edition, or Distributed Edition
• One or both of the following:
  • At least one routing device that supports NetFlow version versions 1, 5, and 9, sFlow versions 2 and 5, J-flow (sampled NetFlow) or IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX).
  • A Flow Publisher monitoring a flow source.
• 32-bit MS SQL Server 2005 Standard Enterprise Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Edition, or 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2 (all editions except Microsoft SQL Server Express edition)

  Note: WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor is more demanding on the database than WhatsUp Gold. While WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor can successfully use SQL Server 2005 Express, we recommend either 32-bit MS SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition or 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Edition for best performance.

• 2 GHz dual-core processor (required) to quad-core processor (recommended)
• An additional 2 (required) to 4 GB RAM (recommended)
• 16 GB (required) to 22 GB (recommended) hard disk space for the databases

  Note: If using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the database size is limited by available hard disk space.