Switch Port - Traffic Accounting @ Datacenter

[daniel_p]

Hi,
hope this is the right place for my questions...

We are currently planning to move some servers to a new datacenter. We need a solution to account the traffic for each server. For a reliable solution we want to measure the traffic on a central switch for each port / server.

I was thinking of cacti doing this. now my questions:

*Is it possible for cacti to summarize total traffic on a per switch port base (monthly)?
*Would it be possible to block a special port at a given amount of traffic automatically? If not with cacti - how could I achieve this?
*What equipment (switch) would you recommend (24-port)?
*What else should I consider / are there any experiences for this task?

Thanks a lot!

Dan

[Linzer]

I was thinking of cacti doing this. now my questions:

*Is it possible for cacti to summarize total traffic on a per switch port base (monthly)?
*Would it be possible to block a special port at a given amount of traffic automatically? If not with cacti - how could I achieve this?
*What equipment (switch) would you recommend (24-port)?

Answer 1) Yes but it is a running average for the month.
Answer 2) Depends on the switch you purchase and/or management software.
Answer 3) Depends on your needs: cost / layers (2/3) / throughput / expandability / interface / etc. Best speak to some hardware vendors.

[Thomaz-D]

Hi there,

got a similar problem and need some help - at least a hint were to start searching. I just bougt a D-Link DES-3526 manageable switch and want to start billing my customers via the total amount of traffic (GB) the transfered trough a switch port during a given timeframe (monthly).

I created a device in cacti and a graph (Traffic in/out with totals). But the problem is as Linzer already said:

Answer 1) Yes but it is a running average for the month.

This is not exactly what I need. Is there any way of exactly "counting" the traffic? The switch seems to be able to generate these informations (RX / TX octets) and deliver them via SNMP/RMON as a permanently incrementing value.

Question:

• [1.]What would be the solution with cacti to evaluate these values? The goal is to see a monthly total of out/in traffic in Gbytes. As far as I understood, due to its roots (rrdtool) cacti is "only" able to calculate averages?
  [2.]If not with cacti, how could I evaluate these values?
  [3.]Is this an "industry-approved" approach of accounting/billing traffic in colo. How do others solve this?? How does it compare to MRTG?

Thanks for your help and please excuse my very limited knowledge of SNMP/cacti ...

Thomaz