Network telemetry requires an external collector to collect the NetFlow/IPFIX application flow data. The Flowmon Collector is the ideal network monitoring appliance that captures, stores, and processes flow data, including normalization, visualization, and analysis. You can download the Flowmon Collector by clicking Download Flowmon Collector on the Network Telemetry screen.

Network telemetry is available by default on all new LoadMaster deployments for firmware version 7.2.53 and above.

Note: Enabling Network Telemetry may impact performance throughputE

On Long Term Support (LTS) LoadMaster versions, or older versions of the LoadMaster that have been patched to a newer version, you may need to enable the network telemetry feature. To enable the network telemetry feature, click Network Telemetry in the main menu of the LoadMaster WUI and click Install.

After you successfully install network telemetry on the LoadMaster, you should see a number of fields to configure on the Network Telemetry screen. Details on each of these options are below:

  • IP address of Collector: Define the destination IP address or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) and port number of your IPFIX collector (for example, 1.1.1.1:2055 or collector.local:3000). The IPFIX export runs over the UDP protocol and you must ensure that the collector is reachable over the network from the LoadMaster. Once you configure the collector IP address or FQDN you can validate the network connectivity by clicking Validate and clicking OK. Validation is based on a plain ICMP ping message and it validates the IP or FQDN (not the port).

Note: Because the network telemetry is not encrypted it should only be exported over a secure network. This is not a LoadMaster limitation - this is because IPFIX is a plain text UDP packet stream.

  • Active Timeout: Set the global active timeout value. The default value is 300.

  • Inactive Timeout: Set the global inactive timeout value. The default value is 30.

  • Export Protocol: The export protocol (IPFIX is currently the only selectable protocol).

  • Advanced Settings: Enable/disable the check boxes here depending on what values you would like to collect.

Note: There are some check boxes in the Advanced settings section that are not possible to change at present. These will be configurable in a future release.

  • Activate export of Application Flow Data: Select the relevant interface (or interfaces) to collect data for.

The network interface screens (for example, System Configuration > Network Setup > Interfaces > eth0) indicate if network telemetry monitoring is enabled or disabled for that interface (depending on what interfaces are selected on the Network Telemetry screen).

Note: In order to enable Network Telemetry on an interface, the interface must have an IP Address. Interfaces configured with Virtual LANs can not have Network Telemetry enabled unless an IP Address is assigned.

Note: When two LoadMasters are operating as a HA pair, the Network Telemetry traffic will present from the physical address of the LoadMaster and not the shared address. It is necessary to create a profile for both the LoadMasters in the HA pair on the Flowmon Collector.

For further details on network telemetry, refer to the Network Telemetry Feature Description.