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Date:      Wed, 28 Aug 2013 06:10:05 +0000
From:      "C. L. Martinez" <carlopmart@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Options to monitor/sniff network traffic under a vm
Message-ID:  <CAEjQA5LqJXH7tYmUL=2iABZrfKJkqmkGTLarZ30hJvxe=m5UzA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <B8F2D3FA-4359-494A-9A1B-2F046A0DA606@jnielsen.net>
References:  <5219ECBD.4040209@gmail.com> <B8F2D3FA-4359-494A-9A1B-2F046A0DA606@jnielsen.net>

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On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 10:26 PM, John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net> wrote:
> On Aug 25, 2013, at 5:38 AM, carlopmart <carlopmart@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I need to monitor/sniff network traffic for three subnets (1 GiB nets) a=
nd I need to do this using a virtual guest under an ESXi 5 host (yes, it is=
 a "handicap").
>
> Not sure about your questions below, but doesn't ESXi 5 support port mirr=
oring in the virtual switch? That seems like a better place to do most of t=
he heavy lifting. You could still attach your FreeBSD instance to the monit=
or port(s) for analysis. That would hopefully help at least with a) by redu=
cing the number of virtual NICs needed.
>

Thanks John for your answer, but I can't use distributed switches in
this ESXi server because is a standalone server (distributed vswitches
are only available when you manage more than tow ESXi servers using
clustering features and is the only option to do port mirroring. Using
a standalone server you can enable promisc in a vswitch and use an
external tap to see all traffic, but that's not the problem actually:
I can see all traffic in this freebsd vm).

About nics: I can't reduce the number of virtual NICs. I need to use
six to monitor six different subnets ... And here is the problem with
IRQs.



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