IPFIX Sampling on vSphere ESXi 6.5, 6.7 and vSphere ESXi 7.0

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Only TCP/UDP/ICMP  are sampled  through IPFIX on vSphere ESXi 6.5 and 6.7.
• All IP Packets are sampled  through IPFIX on vSphere ESXi 7.0 and higher versions.
• Running the below command on the ESXi 6.5  or 6.7 Host:

# vsish -e get /vmkModules/ipfix/portsets/[ps]/stats 

You will observe stats of unsupported protocol would increment when the traffic including IP packets besides of TCP/UDP/ICMP traversed the ports with IPFIX enabled.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x

Resolution

This is an expected behavior in ESXi 6.5 and ESXi 6.7.