Just this week, we fired up some of our Netflow data, forwarding from a single Netscout collector to a Heavy Forwarder. We knew that the binary data flow was about 30 GB, but when it was expanded to ASCII, it was over 200 GB. It overran our license. We shut it down.
For now, we are planning to gather the new ASR record instead of Netflow. That will sort of integrate our Netflow with the packet data from the Infinistreams into one source.
So before you do this, figure out how much Netflow you have, how much ASCII it will expand into, and how big your license is. Our Splunkers here think that Netflow is something to be very careful about.
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