TNPFA 4.1.1 Installation and User Guide - e IBM Tivoli Composite ...

Chapter 4. Configuration
This chapter describes the configuration options of Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer.
4.1 Site management
Sites are used to separate traffic information between administrative domains. Each site can be
regarded as a logical Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer installation with a separate database
and individual settings, including user accounts. A single Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer
installation can be used for many administrative domains with potentially overlapping (private)
address spaces and individual configurations.
Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer is preconfigured with a default site. New sites can be
added and existing sites can be removed with following server console commands:
# tnpfa addsite test
# tnpfa delsite test
Note: The site configuration as well as collected and generated data (report data and log file data) is
deleted with the site. An additional site increases the amount of memory being used.
Flow information packets (for example, Netflow, IPFIX) are collected and analyzed for a particular site
if the corresponding exporters are registered with the site (see Configuration > Site configuration >
General in Figure 4-1). The general settings of each site contain site name, language, skin, registered
exporters (for example, routers), and a description. The site name can be used to refer to a particular
administrative domain. Any exporter registers all exporters with the site that are not registered with
any other site. Every exporter registers all exporters with the site that export to the Tivoli Netcool
Performance Flow Analyzer installation. If only data exported from specific exporters should be
processed by the site, select Specific exporters.
Site configuration changes that are applied are valid for the running system. However, the
configuration files that are used when you restart the system are not automatically updated. It is
therefore important to save the current configuration file at Configuration > Site configuration >
Running config > Commit to disk of the server after all site configuration changes are done (see
Figure 4-2).
Flow information as received from exporters can be stored in binary format on disk if the option Store
flows is enabled in Configuration > Site configuration > Advanced. Over longer time periods, flow
files can use a considerable amount of storage. A task for either removal or compression of flow files
can be configured (see Figure 4-3).
Received flow information packets are stored by Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer in a flow
buffer before analysis. The size of the flow buffer can be altered with the Flow buffer size option. If
the data arrives in large chunks, widely separated, you need a larger flow buffer to deal with the data,
compared to the same amount of data being sent in a more even manner. A flow buffer size of 200 MB
is sufficient for a maximum burst size of 4 million flow records in 5 minutes.
Note: Increasing the buffer size leads to higher memory usage.
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