NTA Flow Storage Database Capacity

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Pushkar,

You've located the correct document for system requirements for the latest version of NTA - that's here: NetFlow Traffic Analyzer 4.6 System Requirements

That recommendation is a general rule of thumb for planning: 8G for every sustained 1000 fps, for a 30 day retention period. The NTA flow database stores granular data over the entire retention period; there's no aggregation or summarization.  So - the storage requirements scale linearly over the retention period.

For example, if you are receiving 10,000 flows per second, you would need (10000/1000)*8GB = 80GB for 30 days retention. Multiple by six to get approximately 480GB for six months retention.

I say approximately because this is only a rule of thumb. There are many factors which are specific to your environment that influence the actual storage you'll need.  It's not possible to perfectly predict your flow storage requirements in advance, and this is an important point to understand.

Some of the factors that influence your actual storage requirements include: The actual flow rates over time, and burstiness or variability of flow traffic, the number of flow sources, the number of interfaces monitored,  the diversity of the endpoints represented in the flow records, how you handle DNS resolution, and the value for Top Talker optimization.

Use this rule of thumb for planning only. Give yourself a buffer; storage is relatively inexpensive. Monitor your database size over time, and adjust accordingly.

jreves​