Netflow CPU usage question

[opnsense-user123]

Hello ... I noticed that if I have netflow set to capture to localhost, on my machine that means about every 15 seconds a Python2.7 process uses 100% cpu (of one core that is) for about 3 seconds. If I turn off 'Capture local' this stops.

My question is, if I set up a VM on another computer on my LAN and have that machine be the 'Destination' for the netflow capture, will that reduce significantly or eliminate that CPU usage? I guess this high CPU use is during the process of writing the cached data for the past 15 seconds to disk and thus the answer will be Yes.

Secondly, can you recommend a software package that is libre and free ($) I could set up on a VM to store the netflow data and also draw pretty graphs like OPNsense does?

Thanks.

[phoenix]

Why not use telegraf on your OPNsense machine (there is a package) and send it to an Influx/Grafana server and you can draw all the pretty graphs you need.

[guest15389]

netflow data would be different from the telegraf data as he doesn't want system stats, but I'm guessing network flows.

I use netdata over telegraf btw