fds

Flow Data Storage (output plugin) [beta version]

The plugin converts and stores IPFIX Data Records into FDS file format. The file is based on IPFIX, therefore, it provides highly-effective way for long-term storage and stores complete flow records (including all Enterprise-specific fields, biflow, etc.) together with identification of the flow exporters who exported these records.

All data are stored into flat files, which are automatically rotated and renamed every N minutes (by default 5 minutes).

Warning: The plugin is still under development and some incompatible
changes in file format may be introduced!

Example configuration

<output>
    <name>FDS output</name>
    <plugin>fds</plugin>
    <params>
        <storagePath>/tmp/ipfixcol2/fds/</storagePath>
        <compression>none</compression>
        <dumpInterval>
            <timeWindow>300</timeWindow>
            <align>yes</align>
        </dumpInterval>
    </params>
</output>

Parameters

storagePath

The path element specifies the storage directory for data files. Keep on mind that the path must exist in your system. Otherwise, no files are stored. All files will be stored based on the configuration using the following template: <storagePath>/YYYY/MM/DD/flows.<ts>.fds where YYYY/MM/DD means year/month/day and <ts> represents a UTC timestamp in format YYMMDDhhmmss.

compression

Data compression helps to significantly reduce size of output files. Following compression algorithms are available:

none

Compression disabled [default]

lz4

LZ4 compression (very fast, slightly worse compression ration)

zstd

ZSTD compression (slightly slower, good compression ration)

dumpInterval

Configuration of output files rotation.

timeWindow

Specifies time interval in seconds to rotate files i.e. close the current file and create a new one. [default: 300]

align

Align file rotation with next N minute interval. For example, if enabled and window size is 5 minutes long, files will be created at 0, 5, 10, etc. [values: yes/no, default: yes]

asyncIO

Allows to use asynchronous I/O for writing to the file. Usually when parts of the file are being written, the process is blocked on synchronous I/O and waits for the operation to complete. However, asynchronous I/O allows the plugin to simultaneously write to file and process flow records, which significantly improves overall performance. (Note: a pool of service threads shared among instances of FDS plugin might be created). [values: true/false, default: true]