Thola is a new open source tool for reading, monitoring and provisioning network devices written in Go. This talk will inform about the current state of development as well as planned features, including reading out inventory, configuring network devices, support for other monitoring systems like Prometheus and many more. It serves as a unified interface for communication with network devices and features a check mode which complies with the monitoring plugins development guidelines and is therefore compatible with Nagios, Icinga, Zabbix, Checkmk, etc.

1. Introducing Thola
Stephan Schmidt, Tobias Berdin
A tool for monitoring and provisioning network devices
A tool for monitoring and provisioning
network devices

2. Overview
generic request
generic response
Server
Juniper speci
fi
c request
Juniper speci
fi
c response
Cisco speci
fi
c response
Cisco speci
fi
c request
Juniper Switch
Cisco Switch
Thola

3. Overview
gather facts
facts
Ansible
Juniper speci
fi
c request
Juniper speci
fi
c response
Cisco speci
fi
c response
Cisco speci
fi
c request
Juniper Switch
Cisco Switch
generic request
generic response
Server Thola

4. Why is Thola that awesome?
• uni
fi
ed interface for communication with devices from
Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, Nokia/ISAM and many more
• support for various devices like switches, routers,
directional radio, UPS…
• easy way for adding additional device types

5. Why is Thola that awesome?
• usage of different protocols including SNMP, HTTP…
• low resource needs
open source

6. Modes of operation
• Command Line Interface
• Monitoring Check Plugin
• REST API
• Ansible Module

7. Getting started with Thola

8. ./thola identify
Automatically identify a device

9. ./thola read interfaces
Read out special interface information

10. • thola check output per default in check plugin format
• can be used in monitoring tools (e.g. Nagios, Icinga)
./thola check

11. ./thola check cpu-load
Check CPU usage

12. ./thola api
Start and con
fi
gure the API

13. ./thola-client
Let the API do the work

14. Device classes

15. Device class content
• conditions for assigning a device to this class
• available operations for the device

16. Device class hierarchy
generic
junos ios
ceraos edgeos fortigate
ip10 ECS3528
ECS3510
…
…

17. Device classes in .yaml
• entire logic in .yaml con
fi
guration
fi
les
• easy to write
• not bound to a programming language
• embedded in binary
• can be extended with code

18. Example condition (ios)

19. Example model identification (ios)

20. Live Demo

21. Using Thola with Ansible

22. Using Thola with Ansible
• gather facts of your hosts
• read out identify information
• perform checks
• embedded in playbooks

23. Why?

25. Gathering identify facts
Identify hosts and display their properties

26. Gathering identify facts
Identify hosts and display their properties

27. Gathering cpu load facts
Read cpu load of your hosts

28. Gathering cpu load facts
Read cpu load of your hosts

29. Why using Thola with Ansible?
• one module for all vendors and device types
• variety of check and read modes
• easy way for adding new manufacturers

30. Thanks for your attention 🎉
thola.io
github.com/inexio/thola
galaxy.ansible.com/inexio/thola
reddit.com/r/thola