Assimilation « Planet DevOps

Category → Assimilation

November 26th, 2012

Reliable UDP: The last major Assimilation feature before the first release

I'm still on track for a first release of the Assimilation code by the end of the year. But there is one last interesting (meaning tricky) feature to write before this release. All communication is over UDP, which means the OS doesn't guarantee packet delivery. So we need to do that ourselves. From an availability perspective, we need to acknowledge packets at the application layer anyway, so nothing much is lost. (Why that's the case is worthy of it's own post). The most interesting part of this is that our protocol needs to be resilient to replay attacks. This post explains what a replay attack is, and how we plan on eliminating them.

By Alan R. • Posted in #monitoringthatdoesntsuck, Assimilation, availability, CDP, client-server, complexity, computer operations, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, graph schema, HA, HA practice, HA theory, IT management, linux, Linux-HA, LLDP, monitoring, monitoringsucks, Neo4J, netstat, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, reliable UDP, replay attacks, scalability, security, UDP/IP, usability • Comments Off

October 17th, 2012

Zero Configuration Discovery and Server Monitoring in the Assimilation Monitoring Project

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just drop a monitoring package onto your servers with no configuration at all, and it all started up, began monitoring your servers, discovered your services, dependencies and switch port connections all without you doing anything - with practically no load on your monitoring servers, and without setting off any network alarms? You can now do that with the Assimilation Monitoring Project. Really. For the skeptics and geeks out there (you know who you are!), this blog post tells you how it works in some detail.

By Alan R. • Posted in #monitoringthatdoesntsuck, Assimilation, availability, CDP, client-server, commercial software, complexity, computer operations, dependencies, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, graph database, graph schema, IT management, linux, Linux-HA, LLDP, monitoring, Neo4J, netstat, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, scalability, security, TCP/IP, Technorati Tags: #monitoringsucks, usability UDP/IP • Comments Off

October 10th, 2012

Assimilation Project Licensing

When I founded the Assimilation project, I chose a license in order to have chosen a license. I always assumed I would make a final license decision before the first release. With that time coming up in the forseeable future, it seems like time to give thought to a more permanent license decision. This blog entry outlines my thoughts on choice of licenses and related issues.

By Alan R. • Posted in #monitoringthatdoesntsuck, /proc, Assimilation, availability, CDP, client-server, commercial software, complexity, computer operations, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, graph schema, IT management, legal issues, licenses, linux, Linux-HA, LLDP, monitoring, monitoringsucks, Neo4J, netstat, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, scalability, security, TCP/IP, usability • Comments Off

September 17th, 2012

Assimilation Monitoring LinuxCon Video

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my talk at LinuxCon in San Diego had been very well received. Thanks to some good friends, we also created a video of the event, and this week I want to point you to the final cut of that video. This talk is a great introduction to the Assimilation Monitoring Project.

By Alan R. • Posted in #monitoringthatdoesntsuck, /proc, Assimilation, availability, CDP, client-server, complexity, computer operations, dependencies, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, graph database, graph schema, IT management, linux, Linux-HA, LLDP, monitoring, monitoringsucks, Neo4J, netstat, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, scalability, security, TCP/IP, usability • Comments Off

September 10th, 2012

Maintainable IP address assignment for clouds and large clusters

This post describes a more maintainable method than normal DHCP of automatically assigning IP addresses and host names to servers which is ideal for cloud computing and large clusters. It assigns them according to the location of the server, and requires zero effort when you add or replace a server.

By Alan R. • Posted in Assimilation, availability, CDP, cloud computing, complexity, computer operations, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, IT management, linux, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, scalability, usability • Comments Off

September 3rd, 2012

I see dead servers – in O(1) time

The title for this blog post comes from a T-shirt I had made for the Assimilation Project. I wore a nicer version of it at my recent talk at LinuxCon 2012. The Assimilation project has some significant and unique claims to scalability. Some of these have been discussed before. This blog article will explain the different aspects of the project and how they measure up in terms of scalability.

By Alan R. • Posted in #monitoringthatdoesntsuck, /proc, Assimilation, availability, CDP, client-server, complexity, computer operations, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, graph database, graph schema, IT management, linux, Linux-HA, LLDP, monitoring, monitoringsucks, Neo4J, netstat, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, scalability, security, TCP/IP, usability • Comments Off

August 30th, 2012

Injecting Nanoprobes into Servers – What’s that about?

I've recently had some people who have asked about the how nanoprobes work – are they clients, or what exactly are they? They start out like clients, and behave in some ways like peers, and maybe a bit like servers. So what the heck are they? The simplest explanation is that they are autonomous delegates of the central management authority. Read on to find out more about how this unconventional model works and why this authority model is key to unprecedented scalability and stealth discovery™ in the discovery-driven Assimilation monitoring project.

August 21st, 2012

Managing Computers with Automation 2012-08-21 06:53:37

It's still true: Monitoring sucks. Server monitoring is a touchy subject, and if you've got a large quantity of servers in your arsenal, it's doubly so. Through a combination of discovery and monitoring, Alan Robertson's Assimilation Monitoring Project hopes to ease those monitoring woes. Robertson, Linux developer and founder of the High-Availability Linux (Linux HA) project, will speak at LinuxCon North America 2012 in San Diego at the end of August. In this Q&A, we discuss what this project is and how it can help.

By Alan R. • Posted in #monitoringthatdoesntsuck, /proc, Assimilation, availability, CDP, client-server, complexity, computer operations, devops, discovery, FOSS, Free Software, graph database, graph schema, IT management, linux, Linux-HA, LLDP, monitoring, Neo4J, netstat, network management, network security, NOC, open source software, OSS, OSS / Free Software, reliability, scalability, security, TCP/IP, testing | Permalink Technorati Tags: #monitoringsucks, usability • Comments Off

August 13th, 2012

An Assimilation type schema in Neo4j

This week I want to talk about an aspect of the Assimilation database schema which is somewhat controversial, an aspect of the schema for which the jury is still out. I chose to represent the Assimilation node type hierarchy with relationships which currently serve no purpose other than to represent the types of nodes in the database. This post will talk about why I put the type hierarchy in, and why it might be a good idea, or maybe not.

August 6th, 2012

Discovering Switches: It’s amazing what you can learn just by listening…

We recently added code to discover switches, switch ports and settings - all in the Steath DiscoveryTM way - without sending out any packets at all! So now you know which switches and which switch ports every monitored server is plugged into. As a bonus we pick up some interesting configuration information on your switch and your particular switch port - just by perking our ears up and listening... Now when you send someone to the closet to do something to your switch port, there is no doubt which port is yours - regardless of that little mistake in the cross-connects, or that tiny error in documentation. [Anyone want to write an iPad switch mapping app for this?]

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