View Collection Agents

The Collection Agent is a process that gathers data from the devices in your network, stores the data in a database, cleans and normalizes the data, and rolls up historical data. Depending on the size of your network, you may have a single Collection Agent running locally on the same computer as the ReportCenter Server (default), or with a large network of PacketShapers you may have one or more distributed Collection Agents collecting data from devices distributed widely across your network.

Flow Detail Record Collection Agents

If you are using version 7.x or higher of PacketWise software in at least one PacketShaper, and if you have also purchased the optional Flow Detail Record (FDR) software license for ReportCenter, then you can enable the Flow Detail Records feature in each 7.x equipped PacketShaper and collect FDR data on a designated Flow Collection Agent.

Since the FDR feature can result in large volumes of raw Packeteer-2 data being sent to the designated Flow Collection Agent you should consider dedicating one or more servers to be used only as Flow Collection Agents.

Impact of Host Accounting

Use of the Host Accounting feature can have a dramatic impact on the total number of components listed in your ReportCenter database. Each individual IP address reported by a PacketShaper configured for Host Accounting creates a new component record and consumes one of your license-limited total components. With the combination of ReportCenter 3.1, version 7.0.0 or higher of PacketWise software in your PacketShapers, and the additional license (software key) required for the Flow Detail Records feature — you can use FDR reporting instead of, or in addition to, Host Accounting and get more finely detailed information as a result. If you are using Host Accounting it is recommended that you enable the feature only on the inside port of your PacketShapers. If you enable Host Accounting on the outside port (or on both ports) of an Internet-connected PacketShaper a very large number of hosts will usually be reported.

Single or Multiple Collection Agents

To determine if your installation requires a single Collection Agent, as in a default installation, or whether the number of traffic classes and host components creates a requirement for more than one Collection Agent, see the table below. Use of the Flow Detail Records feature will also have a dramatic impact on server requirements.

Configuration and Scaling Limits
Configuration	Description	Scaling Limits
One server	ReportCenter Server + Collection Agent (resident on the same server/host)	Up to: 8,000 components (traffic classes)
Distributed, Separate Collection Agent	Collection agent separate from ReportCenter server	Up to: 80,000 components (traffic classes)
Boundary of Environment	Multiple distributed collection agents operating with a single ReportCenter Server	Up to: 200,000 components (traffic classes) or 1,000 Packeteer devices

Server Requirements

The table below presents a minimum server requirements for your ReportCenter installation, based on the total number of traffic classes reported by your PacketShapers.

Server Requirements
Server (Minimum)	Pentium III 1Ghz; 512MB RAM; at least 100GB free space on hard drive; Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5 or higher); Windows 2000 Professional and Server (Service Pack 1 or higher); Windows XP; Windows Server 2003 Notes: Raid 0 or 5 (disk striping) hard drive configurations increase reporting performance dramatically.  If using Flow Detail Records, please contact Packeteer Customer Support or your local Systems Engineer to properly size the database.
Specification	ReportCenter Server Component Counts	Remote Collection Agent Component Counts
1 x 1 GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 1 disk	50,000 traffic classes	20,000 traffic classes
1 x 2 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 1 disk	65,000 traffic classes	25,000 traffic classes
2 x 2 GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 3 disks striped	120,000 traffic classes	40,000 traffic classes
4 x 2 GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, 6 disks striped	200,000 traffic classes	80,000 traffic classes

Collection Agent Licenses

Contact your reseller or Packeteer Technical Support to obtain the required software license enabling multiple collection agents.

Collection Agent Status

Use the ReportCenter Administrator Console program to view the status of your Collection Agents.

1. Drop-down View and select Collection Agent Status; a dialog box appears.
   
   
   
2. If the Status is listed as Active, and the Last Day Ended is yesterday, then the Collection Agent process is running and is nominally OK. The Agent Status tab is displayed initially, this refers to the process of gathering performance data from your PacketShapers and preparing it to be written to the Oracle Database.

Possible Collection Agent Status Values

Collection Agent Status	Definition
Active	The Collection Agent is active and collecting
Active Processing	The Collection Agent is active and performing daily processing
Active Pushing	The Collection Agent is active and pushing the data to the server
Initializing	The Collection Agent is being initialized, it initializes itself on restart, and immediately after midnight
Out of Contact	The Collection Agent is out of contact with the ReportCenter Server
Polling Disabled	Polling is disabled for the Collection Agent
License Invalid	The license for the Collection Agent is invalid
License Expired	The license for the Collection Agent has expired
License Exceeded	The number of components exceeds the number your license allows

Other status information shown under the Agent Status tab includes:

Status Information	Definition
Version	The version of ReportCenter you are currently running
Devices	The number of devices from which the Collection Agent is collecting data, including devices for which polling is currently disabled
Components	The number of components for which the Collection Agent is collecting data, excluding components that have been deleted by an administrative user, or by the discovery process
Last Day Started	The last day the Collection Agent started collecting data
Last Day Ended	The last day the Collection Agent completed collecting data
Last Day Processed	The last day the Collection Agent successfully completed processing collected data. Data processing includes: rolling up data calculating baselines generating exceptions deleting old data
Last Day Pushed	The last day the Collection Agent pushed data to the Report Server

Collection Status

To verify the process of writing collected data to the Oracle database click the Collection Status tab.



The following rows of information are displayed for each Collection Agent:

Status Field	Definition
Name	The name of the Collection Agent
Timeouts	The number of statistics requests that had no response in the configured response time so far today
Other Errors	The number of requests that failed due to Unknown errors so far today
Dropped Responses	The number of statistics records dropped so far today, because the queue of records to be inserted into the database was full
Database Errors	The number of statistics records dropped so far today, because there was an error inserting the record into the database
Inserted Records	The number of records successfully written to the database

Flow Status

To verify that flow detail records are being written to the ReportCenter database click the Flow Status tab.

The following rows of information are displayed for each Flow Collection Agent:

Status Field	Definition
Name	The name of the Flow Collection Agent
Devices	The number of PacketShapers sending FDR data to this Flow Collection Agent
Valid Frames	The number of recognized frames in FDR data received by this Flow Collection Agent
Invalid Frames	The number of FDR frames rejected
Valid Records	The number of good records received
Invalid Records	The number of records rejected
Last Day Processed	The last day the Flow Collection Agent successfully completed processing received data. Data processing includes: rolling up data calculating baselines generating exceptions deleting old data
Last Hour Processed	The last hour the Flow Collection Agent pushed data to the Report Server

More Information

For information on configuring Collection Agents see Define Collection Agents. For Excel spreadsheets that let you calculate expected Oracle database size and data transfer requirements for Collection Agent polling activity, see Sizing Guides.