Vincent Bernat: Akvorado: a flow collector, enricher, and visualizer
Earlier this year, we released Akvorado, a flow collector, enricher, and
visualizer. It receives network flows from your routers using either NetFlow
v9, IPFIX, or sFlow. Several pieces of information are added, like
GeoIP and interface names. The flows are exported to Apache Kafka, a
distributed queue, then stored inside ClickHouse, a column-oriented
database. A web frontend is provided to run queries. A live version is
available for you to play.
Several alternatives exist:
- Kentik, a popular cloud-based solution,
- ElastiFlow, a self-hosted proprietary solution, or
- your own assembly of open source solutions by picking a flow collector (pmacct, GoFlow2, or vFlow), a distributed queue1 (Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ), a database (ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, or Apache Pinot), and a web frontend (Grafana, Kibana, or Apache Superset).
- it is open source (licensed under the AGPLv3 license), and
- it bundles flow collection, storage, and a web interface into a single product.