Patent ID: 8289960

Claim:
A method of aggregating a trace of network traffic for an appliance intermediary to a plurality of clients and a server, the appliance comprising a plurality of cores and a plurality of packet engines, one or more of the packet engines managing network traffic between the server and one or more of the clients, the method comprising: a) capturing, by each packet engine executing on a respective core of the appliance comprising a plurality of cores, trace information for network traffic received or transmitted by each packet engine, each packet engine storing trace information to memory shared with an aggregator responsive to a command stored by the aggregator to a location in the shared memory; b) storing, by the aggregator executing on a core of the plurality of cores, to a buffer the trace information obtained from each packet engine of the plurality of packet engines, the aggregator obtaining trace information stored by each packet engine in the shared memory responsive to a flag set by each packet engine; c) consolidating, by the aggregator, the trace information from all packet engines to provide unified trace data of network traffic for the appliance; d) receiving, by the aggregator, a request from an agent for network trace data of the appliance; and e) transmitting, by the aggregator, the unified trace data of network traffic in response to the request.