CustomPollerDisco

Overview

The Unified Assurance Metric Custom Poller Discovery Agent uses rules to create metrics that will be polled from a device. This is accomplished by using the instance information that was previously gathered by other applications and entered into the Unified Assurance database.

For example, the default job and rules configuration will create the base metric entries for the following:

Custom Poller Discovery Agent Setup

  1. Devices must exist in the Device Catalog for this application to be able to function. Devices can be created in several different ways:

    1. Using the Device Auto Discovery application (Core Device Auto Discovery). See the application documentation for additional information.

    2. Using the Manual Discovery UI:

      Configuration -> Device Discovery -> Manual Discovery

    3. Manually entering all values using the Devices UI:

      Configuration -> Device Catalog -> Devices

  2. Optional - The bandwidth metric creation functionality requires that instances have been discovered using the Metric SNMP Network Interface Discovery Agent job (which uses the Metric SNMP Network Interface Discovery Agent application), or via another method.

  3. Optional - The response time metric creation functionality requires that instances have been discovered using the Metric NMAP TCP Port Discovery job (which uses the Metric Pipe Instance Discovery application), or via another method.

  4. Review the logic in the rules files referenced in the configuration to see the processing that will be done on the devices that are selected:

    • LoadRules will be run during application startup to load data that might be needed during processing.

    • IncludeRules will be read during application startup to load additional files that might be called during processing. In a default configuration, there are several rules files that are included so they can be called from the BaseRules.

    • BaseRules will be run for each device that is selected based on the configuration.

    Update the logic as needed.

  5. Enable the default Job, unless a specific configuration option is needed.

    Configuration -> Broker Control -> Jobs

Default Scheduled Job

Field Value
Package Name coreCollection-app
Job Name Metric Custom Poller Discovery
Job Program bin/core/collection/CustomPollerDisco
Job Arguments
Job Description Rules-based Polling configuration agent
Failover Type Standalone (Supported: Standalone, Primary/Backup)
Status Disabled
Privileged (Checked)
Minutes 59
Hours 0
Days *
Months *
WeekDays 0

Default Configuration

Name Value Possible Values Notes
BaseRules collection/metric/pollerdisco/custom/base.rules Text, 255 characters Relative path to Base Rules.
BranchDir core/default Text, 255 characters relative path to Rules dir.
DeviceZoneID Default First Zone Integer This entry is used to get a more specific list of devices to run the discovery agent against.
IncludeRules collection/metric/pollerdisco/custom/base.includes Text, 255 characters Relative path to Include Rules.
LoadRules collection/metric/pollerdisco/custom/base.load Text, 255 characters Relative path to Load Rules.
LogFile logs/MetricPollerDiscovery.log Text, 255 characters Relative path to Log File.
LogLevel ERROR OFF, FATAL, ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG Logging level used by application.

Best Practices

Rules

This connector uses the Unified Assurance standard rules architecture. The rules are written in Perl syntax. Refer to the following guides for details on rules creation:

Tokens

The agent exposes the following tokens for rules processing.

Token Description
$Instance->{CustomName} The Metric Instance Custom Name for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceID} The Assure1 Device ID for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DevicePriorityID} The Priority value for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceStateID} The State for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceTypeCategoryID} The Device Type Category ID for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceTypeCategoryName} The Device Type Category Name for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceTypeName} The Device Type Name for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceTypeVendorID} The Device Type Vendor ID for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DeviceTypeVendorName} The Device Type Vendor Name for the device being processed.
$Instance->{DNSName} The DNS Name for the device being processed.
$Instance->{InstanceID} The Metric Instance ID for the instance being processed.
$Instance->{InstanceName} The Metric Instance Name for the instance being processed.
$Instance->{IPv4} The IP v4 for the device being processed.
$Instance->{IPv6} The IP v6 for the device being processed.
$Instance->{SysName} The System Name for the device being processed.
$Instance->{SysObjectID} The System Object ID for the device being processed.
$AppConfig Hash reference to the application configuration name-value pairs that were configured. (i.e. use $AppConfig->{'Host'} to retrieve the set value for 'Host'.)
$CustomHash $Custom key, value cache available across all rules. Contents commonly defined in Load Rules then used in Base or other rules. NOTE: This variable is a shared object and any additional sub hashes or arrays must be shared before use or it will cause the error: "Invalid value for shared scalar". Instantiate the sub hash/array using '&share({})' e.g. 
$CustomHash->{SubObject} = &share({});

Example Enhancement

Adding Thresholds to Metrics

While the metrics are being created in the rules, various thresholds can also be added to the metrics automatically. Information regarding the default Thresholds that come with Unified Assurance is available via the Thresholds UI.

Configuration -> Metrics -> Thresholds -> Thresholds

Here is a snippet of the original code from the "ping.include.rules" that creates a latency metric:

    ($Error, $Message, $MetricID) = FindMetricID({
        DBH          => \$Assure1DBH, 
        StorageHash  => $MetricHash, 
        DeviceID     => $Instance->{'DeviceID'}, 
        InstanceID   => $Instance->{'InstanceID'}, 
        MetricTypeID => 60, 
        Factor       => 1, 
        Max          => 0, 
        PollInterval => $PollInterval, 
        Create       => 1
    });
    UpdateMethodOnMetric({
        DBH      => \$Assure1DBH, 
        MetricID => $MetricID, 
        MethodID => 0
    });

Here is the code that can be used after the above to add the thresholds:

    # Adds the "Device Down" threshold
    ($ErrorFlag, $Message) = AddThresholdToMetric({
        DBH         => \$Assure1DBH, 
        MetricID    => $MetricID, 
        ThresholdID => 1
    });

    # Adds the "Latency High" threshold
    ($ErrorFlag, $Message) = AddThresholdToMetric({
        DBH         => \$Assure1DBH, 
        MetricID    => $MetricID, 
        ThresholdID => 3
    });

Administration Details

The following list shows the technical details you will need for advanced administration of the application: