Viavi Apex Enterprise G3-APEX-ENT-32T, User Manual

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Chapter 6: Packet Captures
Capturing packets with the GigaStor
The GigaStor allows packet captures to be scheduled, trimmed (partial packet
captures), and all its data can be exported for archiving. Also learn about
GigaStor indexing and the difference between statistics and packets.
A Observer GigaStor can accumulate terabytes of stored network traffic.
To manage the sheer volume of data, the GigaStor probe indexes the data.
You use the GigaStor Control Panel within Observer Analyzer to manage the
capture, indexing, and storage of large numbers of packets over long periods of
time. While the GigaStor Control Panel is active, standard packet captures are
unavailable for that probe instance. You cannot run the two types of captures
simultaneously.
While actively capturing packets, the GigaStor Control Panel tracks network
statistics and indexes them by time as it saves the packets to disk. This allows
you to quickly scan the traffic for interesting activity and create filters to focus
on specific traffic using the slider controls and constraint options.
The GigaStor Control Panel also automates storage management by deleting
the oldest data before storage runs out. This maintains a multi-terabyte “sliding
windows” of time within which you can review and decode traffic. It also allows
for passive (in other words, virtual) probe instances, which allow users to have
their own instances (and security credentials) without duplicating data collection
or storage.
You can view the sliding window as a time line chart. Depending on what
constraint are in effect and your display options determine what appears on the
chart. By using time selection sliders and other options, you can quickly acquire
and analyze the packets by clicking the Analyze button. This opens the standard
packet decode and analysis window. From there you can view packets, save
them, and perform further filtering if desired.