Recording Information About Traffic Flows

You use the IPQoS flowacct module to collect information about traffic flows. For example, you can collect source and destination addresses, number of packets in a flow, and similar data. The process of accumulating and recording information about flows is called flow accounting.

The results of flow accounting on traffic of a particular class are recorded in a table of flow records. Each flow record consists of a series of attributes. These attributes contain data about traffic flows of a particular class over an interval of time. For a list of the flowacct attributes, refer to Table 6-4.

Flow accounting is particularly useful for billing clients as is defined in their service-level agreements (SLAs). You can also use flow accounting to obtain flow statistics for critical applications. This section contains tasks for using flowacct with the Oracle Solaris extended accounting facility to obtain data on traffic flows.

The following information is contained in sources outside this chapter:

For instructions on creating an action statement for flowacct in the IPQoS configuration file, refer to How to Configure Flow Control in the IPQoS Configuration File.
To learn how flowacct works, refer to Classifier Module.
For technical information, refer to the flowacct(7ipp) man page.

How to Create a File for Flow-Accounting Data

Before you add a flowacct action to the IPQoS configuration file, you must create a file for flow records from the flowacct module. You use the acctadm command for this purpose. acctadm can record either basic attributes or extended attributes in the file. All flowacct attributes are listed in Table 6-4. For detailed information about acctadm, refer to the acctadm(1M) man page.

Become an administrator.
For more information, see How to Use Your Assigned Administrative Rights in Oracle Solaris 11.1 Administration: Security Services.
Create a basic flow-accounting file.
The following example shows how to create a basic flow-accounting file for the premium web server that is configured in Example 3-1.
```
# /usr/sbin/acctadm -e basic -f /var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info flow
```
acctadm -e

Invokes acctadm with the -e option. The -e option enables the arguments that follow.

basic

States that only data for the eight basic flowacct attributes is to be recorded in the file.

/var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info

Specifies the fully qualified path name of the file to hold the flow records from flowacct.

flow

Instructs acctadm to enable flow accounting.

View information about flow accounting on the IPQoS system by typing acctadm without arguments.

acctadm generates the following output:

Task accounting: inactive
       Task accounting file: none
     Tracked task resources: none
   Untracked task resources: extended
         Process accounting: inactive
    Process accounting file: none
  Tracked process resources: none
Untracked process resources: extended,host,mstate
            Flow accounting: active
       Flow accounting file: /var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info
     Tracked flow resources: basic
   Untracked flow resources: dsfield,ctime,lseen,projid,uid

All entries but the last four are for use with the Oracle Solaris Resource Manager feature. The next table explains the entries that are specific to IPQoS.

Entry	Description
`Flow accounting: active`	Indicates that flow accounting is turned on.
`Flow accounting file: /var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info`	Gives the name of the current flow-accounting file.
`Tracked flow resources: basic`	Indicates that only the basic flow attributes are tracked.
`Untracked flow resources: dsfield,ctime,lseen,projid,uid`	Lists the `flowacct` attributes that are not tracked in the file.

(Optional) Add the extended attributes to the accounting file.
```
# acctadm -e extended -f /var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info flow
```
(Optional) Return to recording only the basic attributes in the accounting file.
```
# acctadm -d extended -e basic -f /var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info
```
The -d option disables extended accounting.
View the contents of a flow-accounting file.
Instructions for viewing the contents of a flow-accounting file are in Perl Interface to libexacct in Oracle Solaris Administration: Oracle Solaris Zones, Oracle Solaris 10 Zones, and Resource Management.

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