NFO Installation Guide

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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 [email protected]
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.
A virtual appliance in OVA file format is no longer supported due to CentOS 6 End of Life on November 30 2020. Please contact [email protected] if OVA is the only option for you.
You can install the NetFlow Optimizer software on a platform with the following specifications.
Specification
Details
AWS EC2 Image
RHEL 8
Virtual Appliance
VMware ESXi 5.x and above
Linux
Linux kernel 2.17+ on
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OSes which support systemd:
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
20047/TCP and 20048/TCP
NetFlow Optimizer internal services
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
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