Configuring Host sFlow for Windows

This configuration guide applies to the host sFlow agent installed using the installer hsflowd-win-<version>-x64.msi or hsflowd-win-<version>-x86.msi. The installer will prompt for the required configuration parameters and configure the service. However, it is possible to change the configuration and set optional configuration parameters after installation by changing registry settings and restarting the host sFlow service. On start up, the following registry settings are read from the registry HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hsflowd\Parameters:

  • collector [required unless DNS-SD configuration is enabled, see below] IPv4 or IPv6 address or hostname of the system to which sFlow data is to be sent. Multiple collectors can be defined by using a list of IP address or hostnames separated with commas. If sFlow is to be sent to a non-standard UDP port, then append ":port" to the IP address or hostname (0 < port <= 65535), in this case, IPv6 addresses must be enclosed in []. For example to send sFlow to 10.0.0.1 port 6343, 10.0.0.2 port 6344 and fe80::cabc:c8ff:fe97:ab14 port 6344 set the registry entry to 10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2:6344,[fe80::cabc:c8ff:fe97:ab14]:6344
  • samplingRate [optional] (Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V Role installed) N where randomised 1 in Nth packet forwarded by the virtual switch is sampled and exported. Default 400. Set to 0 to disable packet sampling.
  • pollingInterval [optional] Time interval in seconds between export of counter samples. Defualt 30. Set to zero to disable counter export.
  • agentAddress [optional] Preferred IPv4 or IPv6 address used by the sFlow agent to uniquely identify itself. hsflowd automatically selects one of the IPv4 addresses associated with the adapters. If this results in an undesired address, or an IPv6 address is required, use this parameter to configure the desired address.
  • DNSSD [optional] "off" or "on" string value. If "on", hsflowd makes DNS requests to discover the configuration and ignores the collector settings in the registry. See DNS-SD.
  • DNSSD_Domain [optional] Force hsflowd to request settings for a specific zone (eg .noc.mycompany.com). By default, hsflowd attempts to use the domain configured on the system. If the system name does not include a domain or is a different domain from the required DNS-SD zone, use this setting.

Logging

When hsflowd is run as a Windows service, error messages are logged to %SystemDrive%\ProgramData\Host sFlow Project\Host sFlow Agent\hsflowd.log.

hsflowd can also be invoked from the command line, with the following command line options: [-v[v]] [-l logFile]. When a log file is not specified, messages are logged to stderr.