Chapter 5. Configuring the Network Observability Operator

Procedure

1. In the web console, navigate to Operators Installed Operators.
2. Under the Provided APIs heading for the NetObserv Operator, select Flow Collector.
3. Select cluster then select the YAML tab. There, you can modify the FlowCollector resource to configure the Network Observability operator.

Procedure

1. In the web console, navigate to Operators Installed Operators.
2. Under the Provided APIs heading for the Network Observability Operator, select Flow Collector.
3. Select the cluster and then click the YAML tab.
4. Modify the FlowCollector resource for OpenShift Container Platform Network Observability Operator to use Kafka, as shown in the following sample YAML:

Procedure

1. In the web console, navigate to Operators Installed Operators.
2. Under the Provided APIs heading for the NetObserv Operator, select Flow Collector.
3. Select cluster and then select the YAML tab.

4. Edit the FlowCollector to configure spec.exporters as follows:

   apiVersion: flows.netobserv.io/v1alpha1
   kind: FlowCollector
   metadata:
     name: cluster
   spec:
     exporters:
     - type: KAFKA                         1
         kafka:
           address: "kafka-cluster-kafka-bootstrap.netobserv"
           topic: netobserv-flows-export   2
           tls:
             enable: false                 3
     - type: IPFIX                         4
         ipfix:
           targetHost: "ipfix-collector.ipfix.svc.cluster.local"
           targetPort: 4739
           transport: tcp or udp           5

   2

   The Network Observability Operator exports all flows to the configured Kafka topic.

   3

   You can encrypt all communications to and from Kafka with SSL/TLS or mTLS. When enabled, the Kafka CA certificate must be available as a ConfigMap or a Secret, both in the namespace where the flowlogs-pipeline processor component is deployed (default: netobserv). It must be referenced with spec.exporters.tls.caCert. When using mTLS, client secrets must be available in these namespaces as well (they can be generated for instance using the AMQ Streams User Operator) and referenced with spec.exporters.tls.userCert.

   1 4

   You can export flows to IPFIX instead of or in conjunction with exporting flows to Kafka.

   5

   You have the option to specify transport. The default value is tcp but you can also specify udp.

5. After configuration, network flows data can be sent to an available output in a JSON format. For more information, see Network flows format reference.

Procedure

1. Run the following command to patch the flowcollector CR and update the spec.agent.ebpf.sampling value:

   $ oc patch flowcollector cluster --type=json -p "[{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/agent/ebpf/sampling", "value": <new value>}] -n netobserv"

Procedure

1. In the web console, navigate to Operators Installed Operators.
2. Under the Provided APIs heading for the NetObserv Operator, select Flow Collector.
3. Select cluster and then select the YAML tab.

4. Configure the FlowCollector custom resource. A sample configuration is as follows:

   Configure FlowCollector for SR-IOV monitoring

   apiVersion: flows.netobserv.io/v1alpha1
   kind: FlowCollector
   metadata:
     name: cluster
   spec:
     namespace: netobserv
     deploymentModel: DIRECT
     agent:
       type: EBPF
       ebpf:
         privileged: true   1

   1

   The spec.agent.ebpf.privileged field value must be set to true to enable SR-IOV monitoring.