This section explains the use of packet capture to troubleshoot the NSX Advanced Load Balancer.

Overview

Packet capture in the NSX Advanced Load Balancer runs a TCPdump for the designated virtual service or SE and provides complete visibility into the packet transmission.

Virtual services can be on a single SE or scaled out across multiple active SEs. The traffic captures are automatically executed on all SEs actively handling traffic for a virtual service. After the capture, the SE will forward the PCAP file to the Controller, which aggregates and sorts the client and server data into a single file.

Note:

It is highly recommended to set a limit for the capture, which can either be the maximum number of packets to receive or the capture duration in minutes. On reaching the limit, the capture will be terminated and sent to the Controller.

The following are the traffic capture features:

  • Capturing Virtual Service Traffic using CLI/UI

  • Capturing SE Traffic using CLI

  • SE PCAP Types

  • Configurable Parameters for Virtual Service and PCAP

  • SE PCAP File Rotation

  • Downloading Packet Capture for SE PCAPS

  • Traffic Capture with Scaled Out Service Engines