Chapter 5 Using Flow Accounting and Statistics Gathering (Tasks)

This chapter explains how to obtain accounting and statistical information on traffic that is handled by an IPQoS system. The following topics are discussed:

• Recording Information About Flows

• Gathering Statistical Information

Setting Up Flow Accounting (Task Map)

The following table lists the generic tasks for obtaining information about traffic flows by using the flowacct module.

Recording Information About Flows

You use the IPQoS flowacct module to collect information about traffic flows, such as the source and destination addresses, amount 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 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 acctadm(1m).

1. Log in as superuser to the IPQoS-enabled system.

2. Create a basic flow-accounting file.

   The following example shows how to create a basic flow-account 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

   Statement	Definition
   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 are 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	Tells acctadm to enable flow accounting.

3. 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 but the last four entries are for use with the Solaris 9 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

4. (Optional) Add the extended attributes to the accounting file as follows:

   # acctadm -e extended -f /var/ipqos/goldweb/account.info flow

5. (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.

Where to Go Next

How to Get Instructions for Viewing a Flow-Accounting File

You must create a script to display the contents of the flow-accounting file that was created by acctadm. You can use as the basis for your script a demonstration script for resource management tasks and processing accounting. The following task shows how to get information about the demonstration script.

Before you can use the next procedure, you must have created a file to hold flow records, as described in How to Create a File for Flow-Accounting Data. You also must have added a flowacct action and parameters to the IPQoS configuration file so that traffic classes are tracked by flowacct.

The next task introduces the libexacct programmatic interface and exdump utility to provide output for an acctadm file for viewing processes and tasks. For technical information, refer to the libexacct(3LIB) man page.

1. Become superuser on the IPQoS system and access the directory /usr/demo/libexacct.

   This directory contains a Makefile and the exdump.c script.

2. Perform the instructions to build exdump as is explained in the README.

3. View the data in the flow-accounting file, as is explained in the README.

Gathering Statistical Information

You can use the kstat command to generate statistical information from the IPQoS modules. Use the following syntax.

/bin/kstat -m ipqos-module-name

/bin/kstat -m dscpmk

Example—kstat Statistics for IPQoS

Here is an example of possible results from running kstat to obtain statistics about the flowacct module.

# kstat -m flowacct
module: flowacct                        instance: 3     
name:   Flowacct statistics             class:    flacct 
        bytes_in_tbl                    84
        crtime                          345728.504106363
        epackets                        0
        flows_in_tbl                    1
        nbytes                          84
        npackets                        1
        snaptime                        345774.031843301
        usedmem                         256