Expanding database size

Depending on the volume of NetFlow data that will be forwarded to the Plixer Scrutinizer virtual appliance, it may be necessary to allocate additional storage space for its database.

This process is divided into several tasks:

Adding a hard drive to the Plixer Scrutinizer virtual machine

  1. Power off the Plixer Scrutinizer VM by either logging in and issuing the sudo shutdown -h now command or using the VMware Tools power menu.

  2. Right-click on the virtual machine and select Edit Settings…

  3. Click Add New Device and select Hard Disk from the dropdown.

  4. Expand the New Hard disk settings, and select the type of Disk Provisioning and adjust the disk capacity before clicking OK.

  5. Right-click the Plixer Scrutinizer virtual machine and power it on.

Once the hard drive has been added, it will need to be set up for use by the Plixer Scrutinizer virtual appliance.

Configuring Plixer Scrutinizer to use the new drive

  1. Log in to the Plixer Scrutinizer virtual appliance as the plixer user.

  2. Launch the interactive scrut_util by entering the following at the prompt:

    [plixer@scrutinizer ~]$ /home/plixer/scrutinizer/bin/scrut_util

  3. At the SCRUTINIZER> prompt, enter show diskspace to view the current size of the database mounted on /var/db and then use show partitions to view the available disks.

  4. Still at the SCRUTINIZER> prompt, issue set partitions <new_partition> to make the added hard drive available to the Plixer Scrutinizer virtual appliance.

  5. When prompted, select whether or not there is a data backup that should be used.

Wait for the operation to complete automatically before proceeding to the next task.

Verifying the new filesystem size

To confirm that the new hard drive has been successfully added, enter the show diskspace command again at the the SCRUTINIZER> prompt. The new size of the database should reflect the additional space added with the new hard disk.