Configuring Packet Capture

The Packet Capture feature helps you capture all packets being transmitted and received over physical and virtual network interface controllers (physical port and vNIC) for analysis. These packets are inspected to diagnose and solve network problems. Packets are stored in the/data/intdatastore/pktcaptures folder on the host server.

Benefits

  • You can customize the configuration to capture specific packets such as Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), TCP, UDP, and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP).

  • You can specify a time period over which packets are captured. The default is 60 seconds.

To configure packet capture on a physial port:


configure terminal
tcpdump port eth0

Output: pcap-location /data/intdatastore/pktcaptures/tcpdump_eth0.pcap

To configure packet capture on a vNIC:


configure terminal
tcpdump vnic tenant-name admin deployment-name 1489084431 vm-name ROUTER vnic-id 0 time 30


Output: pcap-location /data/intdatastore/pktcaptures/1489084431_ROUTER_vnic0.pcap

Types of Errors

Error

Scenario

Port/vnic not found

When non-existing interface is given as input.

File/directory not created

When the system is running out of disk space.

The tcpdump command fails

When the system is running out of disk space.

These errors are logged in the nfvis_config.log. By default, warnings and errors are logged,

Packet Capture APIs and Commands

APIs

Commands

  • /api/operations/packet-capture/tcpdump

  • tcpdump port

  • tcpdump vnic