NFO Installation Guide

Installation Guide

Intended Audience

This information is intended for anyone who wants to install, configure, or maintain NetFlow Optimizer (NFO). The information is written for experienced Linux or Windows system administrators who are familiar with virtual machine technology and data center operations.

Before You Install NFO

Pre-Installation Checklist

you can install NetFlow Optimizer on premises (Linux or Windows server) or in your cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Please be sure to have the following before you begin the installation of the NetFlow Optimizer software:

• You have Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment for AWS installations. See steps in Setting Up with Amazon EC2
• You have to login as root for Linux and administrator for Windows installations and updates
• License – A license is required before you can begin using NetFlow Optimizer software. Please register at https://www.netflowlogic.com/register-form/ to get your FREE evaluation license or contact sales@netflowlogic.com
• Network Device - Please refer to the “Configuring NetFlow Data Export” section in your Cisco (or other) device documentation

Sizing Host for NFO Deployment

This the minimum specifications for a production NFO deployment (Virtual machine or physical server):

• 2 physical CPU cores or 4 vCPU at 2Ghz or greater speed per core
• 8GB RAM
• 20GB disk space

When you plan for hardware or virtual machine size, consider the following guidelines:

Option	Number of VMs or Hosts	NetFlow Ingest Rate	CPU / vCPUs	Memory
Small	200	2,000 flows/sec	2 / 4	8GB
Medium	2,000	20,000 flows/sec	4 / 8	16GB
Large	5,000+	50,000+ flows/sec	8 / 16	32GB

Supported Platforms

NFO is distributed as Amazon Machine Image (AMI), as RPM or TAR.GZ for Linux, or as EXE for Windows.

note

A virtual appliance in OVA file format is no longer supported due to CentOS 6 End of Life on November 30 2020.

You can install the NetFlow Optimizer software on a platform with the following specifications.

Specification	Details
AWS EC2 Image	RHEL 8
Linux	Linux kernel 2.17+ on OSes which support systemd: Rocky Linux 8.x CentOS 7.x, 8.x RHEL 7.x, 8.x Debian 9.x Ubuntu Server 18.04 SLES 12.x Oracle Linux Server 7.x Others (not certified) OSes which support OpenRC: Gentoo 17 and higher
Windows	Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 (64-bit)

Supported Browsers

You can use one of the following browsers to connect to the NFO Web user interface.

• Mozilla Firefox 38.0 and up
• Safari 6.0, 7.0
• Google Chrome 34.0 and 43.0 and up
• IE10, IE11, and MS Edge

Required Network Ports

The following network ports must be accessible.

Port	Protocol
8443/TCP	NetFlow Optimizer GUI
9995/UDP	NetFlow/IPFIX Ingestion (plus all ports for ingestion as necessary)
161/UDP and 162/UDP	SNMP polling and SNMP traps
9001/TCP	Configuration Data Base, port is opened on loopback interface 127.0.0.1
20047/TCP and 20048/TCP	NetFlow Optimizer internal services, ports are opened on loopback interface 127.0.0.1

To change ports 20047/20048 perform the following after you install NFO:

1. Add or change the following lines in /opt/flowintegrator/server/etc/server.cfg

   CONTROLLER_PORT 20047
   CONFIG_PORT 20048

2. Change controller port and PCE port in /opt/flowintegrator/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/conf/application.properties

   # Controller listener port number
   **coss.controller.port = 20047**
   # Controller connection timeout in milliseconds
   coss.controller.connectionTimeout = 60000
   # Default PCE configuration notification changes listener port number
   **coss.pce.port = 20048**
   # Default PCE configuration notification changes host
   coss.pce.host = 127.0.0.1

note

Restart NFO and Tomcat after applying these changes as follows:

1. Stop NFO using GUI
2. Restart Tomcat using one of the following commands: /etc/init.d/tomcat_nfo restart or service tomcat_nfo restart
3. Start NFO using GUI