just found this link and netflow is still experimental in ESX4 standard vsphere vswitches?

http://www.vmware.com/products/vnetwork-distributed-switch/features.html

Just tried the 3.5 instruction on our ESX4 host - cannot find netflow module. Come on VMware I know it was always experimental, but I have a feeling we are going to get shafted here for some more cash to use this feature. The sales blurb says it is still experimental - so where is it??

Hi,

1) I'm sorry but we don't have netflow experimental support. I will check with the doc people.

2) Drop me a private message if you actually use netflow in 3.5 and would love to discuss with you.

Thanks,

-howie

Just to add, we have no control of the upstream switches as the servers are colocated. They only informatio we really need is the total bandwidth used for eached VM. Not too worried about the protocols used. I wonder if any third parties could produce a plugin that records neftlow without the massive payout for the cisco 1000v??

In 3.5 there was also the possibility to get the traffic values by requesting it from snmpd, but the snmpd in vsphere does not supply these values anymore (according to the new MIBs, they were "obsolete" or "not implemented"), so we are also looking for another possibility to get the virtual machines's traffic values...
Netflow would be very nice, so please implement it, VMware