The release notes for the recent release 12.2(31) IOS for the 4900 series
Does anyone know the status of if Cisco intends to implement this feature at a future date on this device? I guess it depends a lot on if the hardware supports it or not? It seems like such a high end high performance device that is targeted for a data center environments would have this feature?
Thanks, Les
Asked our SE @ Cisco a similar Q (i also asked about Cat 3560s and 3750s).
the answer that came back is that this is only on 4500s and 6500s - so the Q comes down to whether the 4900s are really 4500s?
i think cisco are missing a trick here - OK, its nice for Cisco to use Netflow as an excuse to push users to buying chassis switches. But very few networks can use chassis everywhere, and management tools are much more useful if they can be deployed pervasively.....
1 alternative might be the 6524s if you dont need 10G ports - these look like they were designed as compact cut down Cat 6500s with a Sup32 and a line card 24 * 10/100/1000 and 8 GigE SFPsOr if all else fails - Foundry have some nice boxes with SMON support. SMON is not as good as Netflow, but not as painful in resources - and some flow management is much better than none....
As I understand, NetFlow functionality is very CPU intensive, so, Cisco does not put it into the "low- and mid-grade" switches. Even with Catalyst
4500-series, NetFlow functionality requires a special daughter card. So, this is the way it is. As an alternative, I would offer you to get a small form-factor PCs with a Gig Ethernet card, and just run a distributed sniffers on each switch. I think it will be cheaper than getting a NetFlow-capable switch where it's not needed. Plus, you can run, for example, IDS or IPS on that PC.Good luck,
Mike
------ PC Headset Adapters for Cisco IP Phones
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