Exporters

The Admin > Resources > Exporters page is used to inspect and manage all flow-exporting devices in the Plixer Scrutinizer environment.

The page’s main view/table lists the following details for all exporters/interfaces:

• Availability (icon):

  • Green: Up on all collectors

  • Red: Down on all collectors

  • Yellow: Flows not being received as expected

  • Grey: Exporter is disabled, unlicensed, or configured as a backup

• Exporter’s configured name, IP address, or hostname

• Flow format and version

• Current status:

  • Enabled: Flows are being collected as normal

  • Backup: Enabled as a backup but does not count towards license limit

  • Unresourced Enabled: Disabled due to low resources but counts towards license; Automatically set to Enabled once resources become available

  • Unresourced Backup: Disabled due to low resources and does not count towards license; Automatically set to Backup once resources become available

  • Disabled: Manually disabled and does not count towards license

  • Unlicensed: Disabled due to license exporter limit

• Average missed flow sequence numbers (MFSNs) per second

• Average flow rate

• Number of interfaces

• Average packet rate

• Timestamp of first flow received from the exporter (hidden by default)

• Timestamp of most recent flow received from the exporter

• IP address or hostname

Note

• The default sorting order for the table/list is by flow rate (flows/s).

• To change what details are displayed in the table, click the Available Columns button and select the columns to display.

• Rates and other details displayed are relative to the specified collector

• The Unresourced Enabled and Unresourced Backup states are automatically applied by Plixer Scrutinizer as part of its low resource fallback functions. However, they can also be manually set to prioritize disabling specific exporters before others, when the system becomes underprovisioned.

Configuring exporter settings

Clicking on an exporter in the table opens a settings tray containing the following actions/functions:

• Add or edit a custom exporter name

• View collectors receiving flows from the exporter

• View available interfaces and any custom interface speeds configured

• Add or edit protocol exclusions

• View FA algorithms currently being applied

• View or edit the SNMP credentials used to poll the device

• Add or view tags associated with the device

Adding protocol exclusions

To ensure that only relevant traffic data is collected from an exporter, one or more protocol exclusions can be defined as follows:

1. After opening the settings tray for an exporter, click the edit (pencil) icon for Protocol Exclusions.

2. In the secondary tray, verify that the correct exporter is selected under Device.

3. Use the Interface dropdown to select the interface/instance to apply the protocol exclusion to.

4. Use the Protocol dropdown to select the protocol to exclude from collection.

5. Click the Add button to save the protocol exclusion for the exporter.

Protocol exclusions are saved by exporter and will be applied, even if a device is set to send flows to a new/different collector.

Exporter management

The exporter management/configuration functions become available via the Bulk Actions tray, when one or more exporters are selected using the checkboxes in the list/table:

• Change exporter status (e.g., enabled/disabled, backup, unresourced enabled/backup)

• Set SNMP credentials to use for polling

• Change polling method (IP address, hostname, or disabled)

• Enable/disable Ignore Flow Duration option for selected exporters

• Enable/disable Ignore MFSNs option for selected exporters

• Enable/disable Ignore Outage option for selected exporters

• Poll selected exporters to update saved SNMP information

• Delete selected exporters

Additional exporter settings

Certain exporters may not send flow data according to Plixer Scrutinizer’s expected patterns, which will be indicated by a yellow availability icon in the main list/table.

The following settings can be toggled on to allow for such irregular behavior:

• Ignore Flow Duration - Should be enabled for devices that export flows less frequently than the recommended once every minute

• Ignore MFSNs - Should be enabled for devices that do not send flow sequence numbers correctly, resulting in MFSNs

• Ignore Outage - Should be enabled for devices when intermittency is expected