Vendor-specific Information Elements

NetFlow (v5/v9) allow the collection of pre-defined flow-related metrics. In addition to that IPFIX also supports vendor-specific "Information Elements" beside the pre-defined ones (see https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipfix/ipfix.xhtml#ipfix-information-elements). Horizon supports the collection of vendor-specific IPFIX data.

Adding Vendor-specific Definitions

Any additional definitions need to be placed in the directory ${OPENNMS_HOME}/etc/ipfix.d. The following example shows a definition for a vendor "Foobar-Company" with a Private Enterprise Number (PEN) of "1234". After the starting scope definition the file just lists all defined information elements including their names, their identfiers and their data-types. See https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipfix/ipfix.xhtml#ipfix-information-element-data-types for available data-types.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ipfix-elements>
    <scope>
        <pen>1234</pen>
        <name>Foobar-Company</name>
    </scope>

    <element>
        <id>123</id>
        <name>myMetricA</name>
        <dataType>unsigned64</dataType>
    </element>
...
    <element>
        <id>456</id>
        <name>myMetricB</name>
        <dataType>unsigned64</dataType>
    </element>
</ipfix-elements>

In order for the newly placed files to become active, Horizon needs to be restarted. When Minions are in use, the configuration is automatically propagated to them.