Troubleshooting MSS

This section contains valuable information on troubleshooting common issues and performing routine maintenance tasks.

Show Commands

The following show commands help with troubleshooting a ZTX Traffic Mapper.

Check the interface status to ensure that the port-channel and the member ports are connected:

ZTX# show interfaces status
Port  Name Status    Vlan   Duplex Speed Type       Flags Encapsulation
Et1/1      connected in Po1 full   10G   10GBASE-SR 
Et1/2      connected in Po1 full   10G   10GBASE-CR 
... 
Po1 connected routed full 40G N/A

Check each GRE tunnel interface status to ensure that the status is Up (multiple GRE tunnels may terminate on the interface):

ZTX# show interfaces tunnel 0
Tunnel0 is up, line protocol is up (connected)
Hardware is Tunnel, address is 0000.0000.0000
Tunnel source 10.10.254.1, destination 10.10.254.2
Tunnel protocol/transport GRE/IP
Hardware forwarding enabled
Tunnel transport MTU 1476 bytes (default)
Tunnel underlay VRF "default"
Up 3 days, 53 minutes, 22 seconds

Check the flow tracking feature status is active on all GRE monitor tunnels from TORs:

ZTX# show flow tracking firewall distributed
Flow Tracking Status
Type: Distributed Firewall
Running: yes, enabled by the 'flow tracking firewall distributed' command
Tracker: flowtrkr
Active interval: 300000 ms
Inactive timeout: 15000 ms
Groups: IPv4
Exporter: exp
VRF: default
Local interface: Loopback0 (10.10.254.1)
Export format: IPFIX version 10, MTU 9152
DSCP: 0
Template interval: 3600000 ms
Collectors:
127.0.0.1 port 4739
Active Ingress Interfaces: 
Tu0, Tu1 

 

The following is a brief explanation of the output:

  • Type: Distributed Firewall type for ZTX Traffic Mapper nodes.
  • Running: “yes” indicates that the flow tracking feature is successfully running.
  • Tracker: Name of flow tracker configuration.
  • Active interval: Interval after which IPFIX data packet is exported for active sessions. Active interval is set to 1800000 ms (30 min) by default and can be modified in MSS Studio.
  • Inactive timeout: The time after which sessions are considered inactive if no packets are received. Inactive timeout is not configurable and defaults to 15000 ms.
  • Groups: Currently, only IPv4 packets are supported.
  • Exporter: Name of exporter configuration.
  • VRF: VRF used for IPFIX export.
  • Local Interface: Local interface used for IPFIX export.
  • Export format: IPFIX version and IP MTU used for exported IPv4 packets.
  • DSCP: Differentiated Service Code Point value used in exported IPv4 packet header.
  • Template Interval: Time interval between successive IPFIX template export to collector.
  • Collectors: List of IPFIX Collector IP and Port. 127.0.0.1 indicates local IPFIX collector running on a ZTX Traffic Mapper device. The local IPFIX collector will send the exported flows to CVP.
  • Action Ingress Interfaces: Displays all the tunnel interfaces on which IPFIX flow tracking is running.

 

Check if mirrored flows are seen at the ZTX Traffic Mapper node:

ZTX# show firewall distributed instance session-table
Legend
eph - Ephemeral port
Sessions: 5
VRF    Proto Source/Destination Fwd/Rev Src VTEP IP Fwd/Rev Pkts Fwd/Rev Bytes Complete Half-Open Start Time          Destination
------ ----- ------------------ ------------------- ------------ ------------- -------- --------- -------------------
vrf2   UDP   1.1.1.1:50004      10.10.254.2         1            428           0        1         2024-10-28 11:13:09 1.1.1.4:1001 10.10.254.3 1 428
vrf1   UDP   1.1.1.1:eph        10.10.254.2         5            2140          5        0         2024-10-28 11:13:09 1.1.1.3:1001 10.10.254.3 5 2140
vrf1   UDP   1.1.1.1:eph        10.10.254.2         5            2140          5        0         2024-10-28 11:13:09 1.1.1.2:1001 10.10.254.3 5 2140

If mirrored flows are not seen at the ZTX Traffic Mapper node, check for drops:

ZTX# show platform sfe counters | nz
Name                                  Owner            Counter Type Unit    Count
------------------------------------- ---------------- ------------ ------- —----
Tunnel-Global-gre_decap_drop_pkts     Ip4TunDemux      module       packets 400
Tunnel-Global-tun_decap_drop_pkts     Ip4TunDemux      module       packets 260
IpInput_Tunnel0-Stateful_drop_counter IpInput_Tunnel0  module       packets 47

If mirrored flows are not seen at CloudVision Portal, check if ZTX Traffic Mapper node has exported the flows, and if there are no failures in IPFIX export:

switch# show agent sfe threads flow cache scan counters
Purged count: 501
IPFIX export count: 354
IPFIX failed export count: 0 

 

The following show commands help with troubleshooting an iTOR or leaf switch.

To verify if the monitor session to the ZTX Traffic Mapper is properly configured:

switch# show monitor session ZTX-1-VRF-100
      
Session ZTX-1-VRF-100
------------------------
      
Programmed in HW: Yes
      
Sources:
      
Destination Ports:
                status   source          dest              TTL   DSCP   key   proto    VRF     fwd-drop
--------------- -------- --------------- ----------------- ----- ------ ----- -------- ------- --------
MirrorTunnel2   active   181.181.181.1   198.198.198.198   128   0      0x0   0x6558   VRF-100 no
      
next hop interfaces: Et49
      
Truncation: active
      
Nominal truncation size in bytes: 192
      
Rate Limit per-egress-chip : 100000000 kbps

In the above command output, check if the Programmed in HW line shows Yes and the next hop interfaces line shows the corresponding next hop interface value.

In case of a 7280R3, the Programmed in HW line may not be present in the show command; for such cases, the next hop interfaces line showing the value is sufficient by itself to confirm the monitor session’s status.

Check the traffic-policy interface counters to examine the policy hits:

switch# show traffic-policy MSS-Policy interface counters
Traffic-policies applied on input:
Counter granularity: per-policy
Traffic policy MSS-Policy
   match rule: Allow-Dhcp: 0 packets
   match rule: CB-Workplace-Rule: 344967309 packets
   match rule: CB-WP-PR-Rule: 172483655 packets
   match rule: CB-WP-PR-Rule-reverse: 172483655 packets
   match rule: CB-Printer-Rule: 2113770290 packets
   match rule: CB-VOIP-Rule: 2113770339 packets
   match rule: Intranet-Rule-ZTX-2: 2113770328 packets
   match rule: Internet-Rule-ZTX-1: 1034935612 packets

For the 7280R3 platform, to display the traffic policy counters, a user must enable the following hardware counters on the device:

hardware counter feature traffic-policy in
hardware counter feature traffic-policy vlan-interface in

Here is the detailed view of the policy:

switch# show traffic-policy MSS-Policy interface detail
Traffic policy MSS-Policy
   description #policy-id=256
   Configured on input for VRFs: VRF-100
   Applied on input for IPv4 traffic in VRFs: VRF-100
   Applied on input for IPv6 traffic in VRFs: VRF-100
   Configured on input of interfaces:
   Applied on input of interfaces for IPv4 traffic:
   Applied on input of interfaces for IPv6 traffic:
   Total number of rules configured: 10
      match Allow-Dhcp ipv4
         Service: field-set DHCP (Protocols: 1)
         Actions:
            Count: 0 packets (input)
      match CB-Workplace-Rule ipv4
         Source prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Workstations (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Destination prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Workstations (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Actions:
            Count: 345202509 packets (input)
      match CB-WP-PR-Rule ipv4
         Source prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Workstations (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Destination prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Printers (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Actions:
            Count: 172601255 packets (input)
      match CB-WP-PR-Rule-reverse ipv4
         Source prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Printers (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Destination prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Workstations (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Actions:
            Count: 172601255 packets (input)
      match CB-Printer-Rule ipv4
         Source prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Printers (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Destination prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Printers (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Actions:
            Count: 2115211468 packets (input)
      match CB-VOIP-Rule ipv4
         Source prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Voip-Video_Clients (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Destination prefix: field-set CB-MSS-Voip-Video_Clients (Prefixes: 1, Except prefixes: 0)
         Actions:
            Count: 2115211517 packets (input)
      match Intranet-Rule-ZTX-2 ipv4
         Source prefix: field-set CB-MSS-All-Sites (Prefixes: 2, Except prefixes: 0)
         Destination prefix: field-set CB-MSS-All-Sites (Prefixes: 2, Except prefixes: 0)
         Actions:
            Drop
            Count: 2115211505 packets (input)
            Mirror session ZTX-2-VRF-100
      match Internet-Rule-ZTX-1 ipv4
         Actions:
            Count: 1035641236 packets (input)
            Mirror session ZTX-1-VRF-100
      match ipv4-all-default ipv4
      match ipv6-all-default ipv6
    

To check if there are any programming errors, use the show traffic-policy interface errors command.

You can also verify prefixes or IP addresses in a group/field-set with the following command:

switch# show traffic-policy field-set ipv4 prefix CB-MSS-Printers
Traffic policy IPv4 prefix field set: CB-MSS-Printers
Source: static
Prefix count: 3
Exception prefix count: 0
Prefix               Exception Prefixes
-------------------  ----------------------------------------------------------
10.1.101.0/26
10.1.102.0/26
10.1.103.0/26
Used in policies: MSS-Policy

Tracing

Enabling tracing can seriously impact the switch’s performance in some cases. Please use it cautiously and seek advice from an Arista representative before enabling it in any production environments.

trace Sfe setting IpfixWalker*/*

Considerations

When deploying Multi-domain Segmentation Services (MSS) with the ZTX-7250S Traffic Mapper, several crucial technical aspects must be considered to ensure optimal performance and policy enforcement.

ZTX-7250S Traffic Mapper

Session Capacity and Traffic Throughput

The ZTX-7250S Traffic Mapper monitor node can handle a maximum of 32 million session entries concurrently. Session entries include a mix of aggregate, short-lived ephemeral, and persistent non-ephemeral sessions. Monitoring your network’s session count is vital to avoid exceeding this limit, which could impact performance or lead to dropped connections. Additionally, the node supports up to 80 Gbps of incoming monitor traffic when all 16 Ethernet ports are actively connected to upstream service Top-of-Rack (TOR) switches. Designing your network to leverage all available ports will maximize monitoring throughput.

Self-IP Support

MSS Studio automatically applies a Self-IP rule to permit unicast traffic destined for the device. While this is usually sufficient for control plane protocols, those relying on multicast PDUs—like PIM, OSPF, or IPv6 Neighbor Discovery for BGPv6—might fail to establish if a default deny any any rule is in place. you will need to allow such multicast traffic in your policies explicitly. Also, remember that Layer 2 devices where traffic policy enforcement occurs still require IP routing to be enabled to function correctly with MSS.

Layer 2 Devices

L2 devices where traffic policy enforcement is applied will still need to enable IP routing.

Network Address Translation

NAT and Policy Rule Limitations

If you enable NAT on 7050S, 720S, or 722S platforms, be aware that the number of supported traffic policy rules will be reduced. This reduction is because NAT and traffic policies share the same Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) resources. Careful planning of your NAT implementation is necessary to avoid impacting your segmentation policies.

Access Control Lists and Policy-Based Routing

Policy Overlap and Precedence

The interaction between different policy types, specifically Access Control Lists (ACLs), Policy-Based Routing (PBR), and MSS Traffic Policy rules, requires careful consideration. If these policies are configured to apply to overlapping flow attributes, their combined effect might not be as intended. For instance, ACLs can be safely applied to Self-IP traffic, but keep in mind that MSS Studio isn’t aware of any ACLs that impact data packets directly. you will need to manually account for how these different policy mechanisms might interact to avoid unintended traffic behavior or security gaps.