GenericPollerd

Overview

The Unified Assurance Metric Generic Poller is used to connect to any set of devices to acquire a variety of values which can then be converted into usable metrics within Unified Assurance. This poller does not retrieve any values by itself, and all processing must be done via the rules.

Metric Generic Poller 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. See the application documentation for additional information.

      Core Device Auto Discovery

    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. 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.

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

    Update the logic as needed.

  3. Enable the default Service, unless a specific configuration option is needed:

    Configuration -> Broker Control -> Services

Default Service

Field Value
Package Name coreCollection-app
Service Name Metric Generic Poller
Service Program bin/core/collection/GenericPollerd
Service Arguments
Service Description Metric rules-based generic poller
Failover Type Standalone (Supported: Standalone, Primary/Backup, Cluster)
Status Disabled
Privileged (Checked)

Default Configuration

Name Value Possible Values Notes
BaseRules collection/metric/generic/base.rules Text, 255 characters Relative path to Base Rules.
BranchDir core/default Text, 255 characters relative path to Rules dir.
CheckTime 900 Integer How often (in seconds) where the application checks to see if there are any relevant changes.
DeviceZoneID 1 Integer The poller will only retrieve devices in the specific zone.
IncludeRules collection/metric/generic/base.includes Text, 255 characters Relative path to Include Rules.
LoadRules collection/metric/generic/base.load Text, 255 characters Relative path to Load Rules.
LogFile logs/MetricGenericPoller.log Text, 255 characters Relative path to Log File.
LogLevel ERROR OFF, FATAL, ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG Logging level used by application.
PollByIP Enabled Enabled/Disabled If enabled, the device IP address will be sent to the rules instead of the device DNS name.
PollTime 300 Integer How often the poller will start a poll cycle, in seconds.
PreferIPv4 Enabled Enabled/Disabled Controls whether or not to prefer IPv4 transport to communicate with Devices. This option is only considered if both IPv4 and IPv6 are available for a device. If this config is missing, IPv6 will be preferred.
Threads 3 Integer Number of process threads created. The aggregator takes a third of this value (rounded up) for database threads unless overridden by the "DBThreads" application configuration.
DBThreads Integer Optional - Number of database threads to be created. If not specified, defaults to a third (rounded up) of "Threads" application configuration.
DeviceGroupID Integer Optional - If specified, the poller will only retrieve devices in the specific group.
SendAllViolations Disabled Enabled/Disabled Optional - If enabled, thresholds will send violation notifications every poll cycle rather than only on state change. Requires 'ThresholdThreads'
ThresholdThreads Integer Optional - Number of threshold threads to be created. Enables the checking of thresholds in the application instead of the Default Threshold Engine. If not specified, application threshold checking is disabled.

Rules

This poller uses the Unified Assurance standard rules architecture, which are 100% Perl syntax. Refer to the following articles to assist in rules creation:

Tokens

The poller exposes the following tokens for rules processing.

Token Description
$DeviceHash->{PollTime} Poll Time CurrentTime
$DeviceHash->{DeviceID} Unified Assurance DeviceID
$DeviceHash->{DNS} DNS name of polled device
$DeviceHash->{IPv4} IPv4 address of polled device
$DeviceHash->{IPv6} IPv6 address of polled device
$DeviceHash->{IP} IP address (possibly v4 or v6) that this system will use for communications based on value of PreferIPv4 application configuration, what addresses are configured on the target device, and what addresses are configured on the local device
$DeviceHash->{Target} The preferred target for this poller. If PollByIP is false and $DeviceHash->{DNS} is not empty, $DeviceHash->{Target} will be the same as $DeviceHash->{DNS}. Otherwise $DeviceHash->{Target} will be the same as $DeviceHash->{IP}. If no valid value can be set for this (if {DNS} is empty or PollByIP is set and {IP} is empty) the device will never be polled.
$PollFlag->down Take Semaphore on $PollHash
$PollFlag->up Release Semaphore on $PollHash
$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({});
$StorageHash Internal cache used as the StorageHash option when calling rules functions such as FindDeviceID(). NOTE: The structure of this cache is subject to change! Not recommended for custom global storage or manual manipulation; use $CustomHash.

Administration Details

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