Flow Considerations
Internet Borders can be very big and noisy places especially in Service Provider land as can network cores.
Its best to analyze actual flows per minute and in very high flow environments it’s advisable to evaluate with a CySight Performance Plus key on a large site until the actual size of the flows are appreciated. Collect data with Performance Plus for at least a few hours during a peak period and then analyze a flows per minute report.
Also read "Calculating Disk requirements"
Moving to CySight Professional is a simply license change as long as your hardware is up to spec to capture and archive full flow data.
Clustered collection is also an option when flows or devices are excessive. Clustered collection enables the use of a single database server and multiple helper collectors.
There are multiple ways to spread processing across the CPU's of a single collector. Compared to other solutions you will not have to resort to additional collectors in most circumstances. See why CySight exceeds the processing capabilities of other NetFlow tools in Debunking Netflow Flows per Second collect capability claims and Config: Flow Archive Control Options