Automating Provisioning of NetFlow Analyzers

NetFlow is an embedded instrumentation within Cisco IOS software (Introduction to Cisco IOS NetFlow). NetFlow tracks every network conversation and thus provides insight into the network traffic. Third party NetFlow analyzers are available to store, analyze, alert and report on the NetFlow data. NetFlow analyzers allow users to create custom alerts and reports based on the network traffic. To maximize the benefits from custom alerting and reporting the analyzers must be configured with details of the network environment. Manual configuration of the analyzer can soon be out of sync with the actual setup thus creating false negatives and false positives. This paper proposes an option to automate the configuration of the NetFlow analyzer from a central repository.