Talk by: Thomas Gelf While the Icinga Director is the main configuration tool for Icinga, vSphereDB is a completely different beast. Icinga models everything around Hosts and Services, vSphereDB instead discovers your whole VMware infrastructure and builds a huge and deep inventory. This talk wants to explain the reasoning behind this, shows what’s possible right now and where those powerful Icinga components are heading to in the near future.

1. Icinga Director and vSphereDB
how they play together
Icinga Camp Zürich 2019Thomas Gelf <thomas.gelf@netways.de>

2. my slide-deck at 6am this morning

3. thomas.gelf@netways.de

4. thomas.gelf@icinga.com

5. Icinga Director
<disclaimer>this != introduction</disclaimer>

6. Icinga Director
<hands>up</hands>

7. for the few...
configuration front-end for Icinga
extremely powerful automation tool
spend some time, save a lot

8. a few words

9. ...on automation

10. divide et impera
automate the large chunks of work
delegate the annoying rest of it
become a monitoring architect

11. define the rules
Icinga allows for rule-based monitoring
Director allows exemptions from the rule
combine the power of both!

12. import from everywhere (1)
MS Active Directory (or any other LDAP Directory Server)
The Cloud (AWS, Azure...)
YOUR Cloud (Mesos/Marathon, Consul, Nomad, Proxmox, vCenter, ESXi)
Automation Tools (PuppetDB, Saltstack)

15. Import from everywhere (2)
Files (JSON, YAML, XML, CSV, Excel Worksheets)
SQL (MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, DB2, sqlite)
CMDBs (iTop, Netbox)
nmap (they call it discovery)
REST APIs (generic ones)

17. ANY Source
our Import Source is a Hook
it’s upgrade-safe
lives in your custom module

18. Don't know...
...how to create a custom module?
MODULE=awesome
mkdir $MODULE
icingacli module enable $MODULE
https://github.com/Icinga/icingaweb2-module-training

19. Don't know...
...PHP?
public function fetchData()
{
return json_decode(`/usr/local/bin/my-awesome-script`);
}

20. the correct way
Use a perfect Data Source. Use the CMDB!

21. that one guy
He has the perfect CMDB.
Somewhere out there.
(Philippe Semeria, Wikipedia)

22. the 99% of us
are in an ongoing CMDB migration project
have more than one CMDB
all of them are outdated and incomplete
are building the next big thing
have no CMDB at all

23. tweak your data
use Property Modifiers
there’s a Hook, write your own ones

26. Anecdote (1)
MS people created own CMDB
existing Oracle-based one: not good enough
problem: both where incomplete
MSSQL-Instances have been modeled
but most where missing

27. Anecdote (1)
solution:
reverse-engineered the Discovery Protocol
wrote an Import Source
hundreds of instances on 90+ MSSQL servers
in parallel: less than half a second

28. Anecdote (2)
problem : we pay per notification
solution: we need to model dependencies
network people:
we cannot show you our network map
why? security reasons.

29. Anecdote (2)
traceroute became a Property Modifier

30. pro tip

31. tip: roll your environments
test new commands in DEV
prepare templates
define Data Fields
place into a Configuration Basket, Snapshot
diff against STAGE or PROD, roll it out

35. what’s next?
we’ll delegate more tasks to the daemon
fully resolved (and instant) cache tables
lays the basement for many features

36. vSphereDB

37. Icinga Module for vSphere®
> The easiest way to monitor a Vmware
> vSphere® environment. Configure a
> connection to your vCenter® or ESXi™
> host and you're ready to go”

45. what’s next?
we ship performance data
first iteration: InfluxDB
enriched data for nice Grafana dashboards

49. so...
in Icinga we have Hosts and Services
how does this fit together?

50. Director Integration
Provides an Import Source out of the box
Former versions: SQL Import

51. Check Commands
they are there, ready to use
very simple
fast, as they fire against vSphereDB
but: covering only a small part

52. it doesn’t stop here

53. a new paradigm
we took three decisions:
the central component is now "the Web"
modules are allowed to run remotely
we'll ship an opinionated Inventory

54. inventory
some things rarely ever change
a building is a building
a rack is a rack
an interface is an interface

55. ya live in da cloud?
don't worry:
the real world will be opt-in only

56. for all the others
let me show you a sneak preview
example: racks, devices, interfaces

59. distributed
secure Icinga Cluster protocol
remote executors (think: satellites)
modular and extensible like Icinga Web

60. working prototypes
Async SNMP
Async TCP checks, DNS resolution
Director Deployments
SSH Host Keys

61. working prototypes (2)
UNIX socket authentication
interactive CLI
first web components

62. other candidates
Windows PowerShell module
X.509 module – SSL certificates
Jolokia
Web Scenarios
...and many, many more!

63. SNMP playground
mass upload of MIB files
walk huge interface tables interactively
...and on remote nodes

64. and now?
no written roadmap for this
we’re customer-driven (sales pitch ;-)
and we’re pushing hard to get this done

65. Thank you!
Icinga Camp Zürich 2019Thomas Gelf <thomas.gelf@netways.de>

66. Questions?
Icinga Camp Zürich 2019Thomas Gelf <thomas.gelf@netways.de>