NetFlow v9 Template should be the first packet sent to the NetFlow collector from the exporter (MX). Sometimes this is not the case, and if so it may lead to incorrect information on the NetFlow Collector.
After router or FPC restart, Ukern on FPC starts sending NetFlow v9 Template and Data Records towards NetFlow Collector based on the configuration of the MX router. To parse the received Data Records, the NetFlow Collector should have NetFlow Template where the structure of the fields in Data Records is described. In case the NetFlow Collector has already received Template (before the router/FPC restart), it continues parsing the received records (after the router/FPC restart) based on the previously received Template if the new Template is not received yet. However the router restart can be done to upgrade Junos version and after the upgrade the content of NetFlow Data Records can be different. In this case, the NetFlow Collector may still try to parse the received data based on the old Template with unpredictable results (incorrect data entries for example).
The Ukern on FPC (control plane) starts sending NetFlow Template and Data Records via data plane (TRIO chipset for example) as soon as FPC is up. However the first NetFlow packets can be dropped on the data plane due to the lack of routing information on the data plane as the route towards NetFlow Collector can be added a bit later by the routing engine. When the related routing information is added, the data plane starts sending NetFlow packets but most probably these are going to be Data Records. Eventually the Template will be sent towards the Collector but this will happen only after reaching next refresh interval for the Template.
To avoid incorrect values, the NetFlow data export can be disabled before the upgrade and enabled after the upgrade.
template-refresh-rate