Purnadi_K
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Joined 10 years ago
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Re: Simple Check for SSL Cert Expiration Monitoring
hi Anil, I have a doubt since SHA1 is slowly losing proponents due to its security flaw (& our collectors are more and more equipped with latest security patch :).You can try though, any device in your portal to test? Please don't tell me here :)/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x" title=":)" width="20"> You can open an email ticket to inform me the device and I will test it out.257Views1like0CommentsContainer
This might be my last article before leaving my beloved LogicMonitor. It has been a privilege to be part of the Support team but life happens to everyone and I know all things work together for good.... Now the Docker monitoring. We know the standard monitoring described and explained here: https://www.logicmonitor.com/support/monitoring/applications-databases/docker/, which takes advantage of Google cAdvisor, a tool, if I may define it, by Google to monitor Docker containers, elaborated nicely in greater details here: https://github.com/axibase/cadvisor-atsd. This tool is equipped with API which LogicMonitor uses to collect some data about the running Docker. There is a readily available datasource for such. To make life more exciting as a support team member, about a year ago I received a request from one among ALL our important Clients, by the name of RS (a.k.a Robert), whose request is the following: We are using cadvisor to provide docker metrics to Logic Monitor. Is there a way to snag a history of the size of each container that is definitely beyond Support and usually it will go to our excellent Monitoring Engineering team whose responsibility is to develop LogicModules, but I embarked on a challenging journey and within a month, a datasource for that purpose was ready. This is beside the matter, I am in the midst of gaining knowledge about containers and came across an orchestration system for containers which is boasted to have a 'self-healing' mechanism, Kubernetes. Now I recognize that in the modern cloud infrastructure, self-healing is not uncommon. The indisputable remarkable cloud providers of this generation already have the same kind of feature or products in their offerings, auto/self-scaling, auto/self-replicating, auto-scheduling, etc. This is in-parallel (or even deploying the idea) of the fast-progressing development of Artificial Intelligence in cloud and system infrastructure, a system that has the intelligence to heal itself. Taking the benefit of Kubernetes that I have installed, researching container metrics in regards with the size began and the answer lies within this statement: Quote "You want a system to offer and push their own health status to the monitoring layer, because who knows better about status than the system itself?" Exactly the same goes with cAdvisor for Docker which has API to monitor itself and that is the very method that LogicModules "Docker_Containers_cAdvisor20" is using to collect data from Docker containers. Everything we need for monitoring is already available and provided by the source...the cAdvisor API. Some sample metrics presented by cAdvisor API in a web-based display: We just need to find out how to process those outputs and put the numeric data into datasource. Fast forward, this is the final product, the monitoring of virtual size of Docker containers (orchestrated by Kubernetes) in my test and please take note of the instance names and wildvalues: Note: it is also seen (in the 2nd screenshot, a datapoint by the name "virtual_size_sum" and "virtual_size_mbyte". Now the next question is: how the data numbers come to be? Firstly, let us take an example of one container highlighted above as an example for the calculation. The instance (container) has a name of "k8s_carts_carts-794f6cc876-z9d6p_sock-shop_7655a496-d347-11e7-90ef-000c29412e95_0"and has wildvalue of: 8afc5e907b809b9a15884b518fdff1678cad54d2562d6d0b63bd3fb5ce77d5a3 If we trace back, that wildvalue can be found in the data collected from cAdvisor API as well, in a text-based result as below, which are the output of running Docker processes: Note: there are 2 (two) processes for the containers, hence the SUM of the virtual size datapoint ("virtual_size_sum"). When we zoom into only those 2 processes with the same wildvalue of one container, we will see clearer: It makes the total virtual size as follows: virtual size sum = 1795608576 + 1560576 = 1797169152 B (= 1797169152/1024/1024 = 1713.9140625 MB) (note: virtual size PID 5686 = 1560576 , virtual size PID 5810 = 1795608576) The number is precisely what cAdvisor web-based data earlier shows: upsize screenshots: If you see the total virtual size number, that is what is presented by LogicModule collected from the cAdvisor: The datasource had actually been submitted, but it is not released yet in the community and is still undergoing a review process by the official team, so it may take a while. (Locator Code:JAGW6D). Therefore there is no way to download it from LM Exchange yet. If you wish to have it, you may contact the excellent Support Team and they will search my past case to get hold of the datasource. Alternatively, you may drop an email in my personal address: purnadi.k@gmail.com as I will sadly be leaving soon. Life is too short, so live your lives to the fullest and may we meet again, one way or another. Have a fun day! Cheers.25Views0likes2CommentsIPv6 - a reality check
IPv6 which used to be a behemoth and now is a norm, is still a thing that is widely-unsupported as a standard, although more and more are joining the pool and making their infrastructure IPv6- friendly. IPv4 addresses are scarce, according to the 'authorities' (i.e. APNIC, RIPE), but whether it will be completely replaced soon by IPv6, remains to be seen (https://mightytechknow.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/ipv6-internet-routes/). As of now, both public routes are still growing with IPv4 stands at ~670,000 routes and IPv6 at ~45,000 (15K growth since Aug 2016). Quote Just for information, the number of the internet routes as of Mar 2018 as in the screenshot (taken from public BGP routes information from route servers): IPv6: IPv4: For LogicMonitor, I can be certain that Internal Web Service and Internal Ping Check are compliant with IPv6, which also means our collectors are proudly capable to deal with IPv6. As for External Service Check (Web,Ping) is beyond my position to tell if it is supported. Nonetheless, I have a personal strong confidence that pertaining to SiteMonitors, IPv6 is already integrated, but to fully support our precious Clients to add Web or Ping Service check, it will be fully dependent on whether those SiteMonitors are connected to IPv6 backbone which I foresee it will be in the near future (I earnestly hope so). There are questions from LogicMonitor community about IPv6 as well that I assume it will be more common as time progresses: /topic/748-anyone-polling-with-ipv6-share-your-experiences//topic/1298-ipv6-support-for-services/ Following is a little showcase of Internal Web and Ping Check using private IPv6 addresses (of course): 'Web Check' 'Ping Check' and as you can see that 'all things are possible to him who believes' :)/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x" title=":)" width="20"> Note: Here is the IPv6 website: The ping and web access test from the server (collector):35Views0likes0CommentsWatching Over Tunnels
--- "To him who is able to keep you from stumbling" ---- Monitoring a tunnel to be notified if it is stumbling is what this topic is all about. Last year there was a request by one of our financial customer, a private investment bank, that uses Palo Alto Networks firewall to monitor the VPN tunnels on PAN device and although there are wide range of monitoring set with our current LogicModules, this specific feature is yet to be developed, so here comes a customized monitoring, leveraging on existing datasources. I will, again, refrain mentioning customer's name as I have no permission to use, but initial would suffice ("MB"). I had a privilege to deploy PAN device (PA-5000 series) long before layer-7 firewall becomes popular, when PAN stole the head-start in the industry. It is dubbed to be one of the sophisticated firewalls in the market even until now with its heartbreaking price (in my opinion) but it delivers its promise though. They even have virtual appliance which is quite efficient and a real software-driven firewall although selling the box is definitely a more money-making business just short years ago while nowadays hardware business with high-cost brand or trademark may start losing grounds and thanks to software-driven 'everything' (network,storage,data centre,etc). Nothing fancy about it but it was meticulously established based on a research of Palo Alto Networks API. It is not official datasource in LogicMonitor repository yet but it is in LMExchange community grade datasource (you can download with LogicModule Locator: 2KLFET). Here is a working sample applied on a PA-800 series device with 3 tunnels connected to remote PAN devices: Following is the Active Discovery script to discover the active tunnels on the device : import com.santaba.agent.groovyapi.http.*; apikey = hostProps.get("paloalto.apikey.pass") host = hostProps.get("system.hostname") command = java.net.URLEncoder.encode("<show><running><tunnel><flow><all></all></flow></tunnel></running></show>"); url = "https://${host}/api/?type=op&key=${apikey}&cmd=${command}"; response_xml = HTTP.body(url); response_obj = new XmlSlurper().parseText(response_xml); response_obj.result.IPSec.entry.each() { name = it.name.text() tunnelid = it.id.text(); innerIf = it."inner-if".text(); localip = it."localip".text(); peerip = it."peerip".text(); println "${tunnelid}##${name}##local:${localip} - peer:${peerip}"; } return 0; and afterward Collection script to get the data needed: import com.santaba.agent.groovyapi.http.*; apikey = hostProps.get("paloalto.apikey.pass") host = hostProps.get("system.hostname") wildvalue = '##WILDVALUE##'; command = java.net.URLEncoder.encode("<show><running><tunnel><flow><tunnel-id>" + wildvalue + "</tunnel-id></flow></tunnel></running></show>") url = "https://${host}/api/?type=op&key=${apikey}&cmd=${command}" response_xml = HTTP.body(url); response_obj = new XmlSlurper().parseText(response_xml); response_obj.result.IPSec.entry.each() { entry -> entry.children().each() { node -> println node.name() + ": " + node.text(); node.children().each() { list -> println list.name() + ": " + list.text(); list.children().each() { instance -> println instance.name() + ":" + instance.text(); } } } } return 0; The original request was only to get the tunnel status (datapoint: tun_status) hence the graph is only one, but I expanded for other metrics available from the API. One can always add graphs for other datapoints as they deem fit. Quote DISCLAIMER: All content in this article is solely a personal opinion of the author as a contribution to LogicMonitor community and is for personal use of the readers and provided as is, without assitance from LogicMonitor Support. There is no support or marketing-driven influence by any vendors or principals of any products mentioned in the article. 1153Views1like3Comments'Shell' with 'Power' - DNS response time
I never believe the 'virtual' dispute between *nix lovers and UI lovers that has been going on since NT days (with its PDC,BDC concept) and during the days when virtualization was still a highly-guarded confidential technology by the big boys of Unix era (LPAR, LDOM,VPAR) which was boasted to be able to do hardware virtualization and of course with its highly non-sensible price of license as well. IBM was the champion of all with its RISC and Mainframe era, followed by SPARC of the 'sold-off' Sun Microsystem, developed heavily by Fujitsu. Sadly for the big boys, that too-far-fetched technology has become a commodity, common for wide consumers, nowadays. Thanks to virtualization technology running on x86 that makes the seasoned sysadmin and newbie alike to be able to play with used-to-be 'high-level' certified Unix administrator. Exclusivism has become a commonality. Back to the dispute...one group say GUI-based system administration is the best tool of all while the other camp, with its exclusivity and probably fear-driven feeling of losing the identity, say the terminal-based administration has no rival. I beg to differ though, and must disagree with both. The best of both worlds is the best Therefore there are times text-based system administration is very useful and efficient but on the other hand, throwing terminal for the sake of few clicks on a UI is what a sysadmin should do to enjoy more life. With that, I would say that introducing PowerShell since some time ago is the right move by Microsoft and it is about time for them to bring up the level of competition. So much about the past, I actually just would like to inform that in the recent past, our 'creative' Client of a loyal LogicMonitor's customer (whom I should refrain to mention the name since no permission is given to me by the person but quoting his initial 'JJ' will be sufficient I believe, attempted to use PowerShell to do name server lookup. Being a *nix guy for sometime, I was wondering why in the world people do not want to just use nslookup or dig? I hope my client would not get offended and he should not since I was about to give a compliment. Through the simple and raw development of a datasource, I learnt once again that a new thing is not a bad thing and in fact, it brings about a new way of creative thinking and opportunities. Although our Support team, by standard operating procedure, is never responsible to develop datasource and such capability is even beyond the capacity of Support team, but in this exceptional case, the Support team has tried to put a very raw development, however it is not to be taken as official datasource nor a complete and efficient development, but merely for a proof of concept or simple achievement of a purpose. Improvement has been made based on the original script submitted by our Client as follows: $DomainControllers = [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Forest]::GetCurrentForest() | Select-Object -ExpandProperty GlobalCatalogs | Select-Object -Property @{Name="DC";Expression={$_.Name.split('.')[0].ToUpper()}}, Name, IPAddress, SiteName $FastenalDomain = "fastenal.com" $Server = "10.0.0.1" $Prime = (Measure-Command {Resolve-DnsName -Name $FastenalDomain -Server $Server -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue}).Milliseconds ForEach ($DomainController in $DomainControllers) { try { $DNSResponseTime = (Measure-Command {Resolve-DnsName -Name $FastenalDomain -Server $DomainController.IPAddress -ErrorAction Stop}).Milliseconds } catch { $DNSResponseTime = $false } Write-Host "$($DomainController.DC)=$DNSResponseTime" } So basically what to be achieved is to measure the latency of resolving an [external|internal] domain using several DNS servers (in this case is internal DNS in a customer's domain). The script looked quite complex at first and as we might have known that datasource may need two set of scripts for Active Discovery as well as data Collection, so after some tests and reworks beyond support hours ...and I need you to imagine the time spent for non-programmers to develop such datasource, is beyond comprehension, but the anti-climax is: it is actually very simple that possibly will take 5 minutes time of a real scripter. Anyway, it is still an achievement nonetheless, so here it is the final product: Active Discovery (this is querying DNS servers exist in the local domain): $DomainControllers = [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Forest]::GetCurrentForest() | Select-Object -ExpandProperty GlobalCatalogs | Select-Object -Property @{Name="DC";Expression={$_.Name.split('.')[0].ToUpper()}}, Name, IPAddress, SiteNameForEach ($DomainController in $DomainControllers) { $nsipaddress = $DomainController.IPAddress Write-Host "$($nsipaddress)##$($DomainController.DC)" } return 0 Collection: $responseTime = (Measure-Command {resolve-dnsname -name fastenal.com -server ##WILDVALUE## -erroraction stop}).milliseconds Write-Host "$responseTime" Yes, of course, it is used in Windows Servers environment (I do not even know if *nix has domain controller concept?)..... Cheers.5Views0likes0CommentsRe: Anyone polling with IPv6? Share your experiences
Hi, for sure, any 'internal' monitoring, if I may use such term (or between collector to the device), is IPv6 friendly as of now. But that is only within the limit of collector's reachability to devices. When it comes to public-facing monitoring, such as External Service Check, it is yet to be supported (until our SiteMonitors connect to IPv6 backbone, I believe). For internal Service Check, I did a simple test to see if the v6 address is accepted and truly it is:4Views0likes0CommentsRe: IPv6 Support for Services
IPv6 is only supported for INTERNAL Service check as of now. For external Service Check, well, I assume it will depend on whether SiteMonitors are connected to IPv6 providers or tunnel, and neither one is yet available at the current moment. Until then let us keep watching if IPv6 addresses will be in this list in the near future: https://www.logicmonitor.com/support/services/about-services/what-are-services/#What-locations-are-services-tested-from66Views0likes0CommentsSSH key for remote session in LogicMonitor
Info: Groovy script is the base for the environment and certainly the target/end device must be a linux-based, be it a distro of Linux server/desktop or an appliance with linux-kernel firmware (err...it's basically almost every device then: firewalls, switches, IDS/IPS, LB, Apple devices, Android devices, etc....it seems all gadgets on the planet using linux kernel) It is a request some years ago (seems so long though, which actually is +2 years) by a LogicMonitor's Customer: /topic/524-ssh-key-based-auth-for-groovy-scripts-datasources/ Obviously, this is not an official datasource crafted by the amazing Monitoring Engineering team of LogicMonitor, but patting my own back, it suffices to say that it serves the purpose for a better security connecting remotely which has been a common best-practice by anyone who enjoys text-based command line remote session. SSH Key is used over the option of sending password due to the apparent reason of information security, although one might argue that the ssh password will be only between a LogicMonitor collector and the endpoint, within a supposed-to-be internal network. Yet a security best practice may dictate such usage regardless of the network. Before progressing further, however, there is a catch in using ssh key, which is the necessity for a deployment of public key to each target device. Simply put, every time SSH Keys are used for remote session between two devices, there will be private key and public key used for authentication process, hence no password needed. These keys are to be put in the devices, private key in the source device where the remote session is originated and public key in the endpoint. Private key is not for a share whilst public key is for any device that the source will need to connect, should the ssh key be used. The only hassle, even if it is considered to be one, is to load that public key on each target device (if there are many). From the security standpoint, that is totally not an issue and rather a compulsory instead. (As a comparison, by using ssh user and password, the process would be similar too, that is to create user and password in each target device). This practice is really not an ancient stuff and almost every cloud provider, AWS being the one, has that feature recommended (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-key-pairs.html). In LogicMonitor case where I did the test, it is between a collector server/device and a monitored device (both happen to be Ubuntu 16 although Windows can be used for the collector as well and on the other hand, definitely it can not be used for Windows target device, for the obvious reason). For my simple test, it is just to monitor a log file size which is a syslog. One thing worth noting is, remote session type of monitoring will certainly consume more resource of collector, as a matter of fact, every datasource using script will do. Besides, using this method, the processing time seems to increase by a little bit, compared with user/password, but I have not done any thorough observations though (not only that I do not intend to, since this is just a test, nor have I the environment huge enough to do a high load-test). Security and processing speed, they do not go in parallel for sure, especially considering the recent havoc by a processor company caused a nightmare for information security worldwide, bypassing security measure for the sake of increasing a speed of data processing. So here is the script which is basically running a command to throw output of a data from a file named 'dusyslog' in the remote device and a datapoint will capture it (datapoint name: size): import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.util.Properties; import com.jcraft.jsch.Channel; import com.jcraft.jsch.ChannelExec; import com.jcraft.jsch.JSch; import com.jcraft.jsch.Session; try{ String command = "cat dusyslog"; String host = hostProps.get("system.hostname"); String user = hostProps.get("ssh.user"); String key = hostProps.get("ssh.key"); JSch jsch = new JSch(); jsch.addIdentity(key); jsch.setConfig("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no"); Session session=jsch.getSession(user, host, 22); session.connect(); Channel channel = session.openChannel("exec"); channel.setCommand(command); channel.setErrStream(System.err); channel.connect(); InputStream input = channel.getInputStream(); channel.connect(); try{ InputStreamReader inputReader = new InputStreamReader(input); BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(inputReader); String line = null; while((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null){ println(line); } bufferedReader.close(); inputReader.close(); }catch(IOException err){ err.printStackTrace(); } channel.disconnect(); session.disconnect(); }catch(Exception err){ err.printStackTrace(); } The first thing you can notice is I am using : jsch.addIdentity(key) for adding the key file into the session for authentication. So what is this file? it is the private key file residing in a secure place in collector server. You need to make sure the file 'dwelleth in the secret place of the most High and shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty'.I really mean it that the private key should not be exposed to the world. But of course, I make it sound like a very serious security matter :)/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x" title=":)" width="20"> So just to make sure that file is given limited permission for collector service to access is sufficient. Undoubtedly the script is not built by myself from scratch but I have made some modification so it is safe to be copyrighted by me and you have the 'the right to copy' & enhance it if you need to and providing me a treat of coffee would be highly appreciated. Further to that, this part: key = hostProps.get("ssh.key"); as per normal, is defined at the device property and following is the sample from my test: Linux device: /security/key Windows device: C:\\security\\key Note: you can add an additional security to disguise the location of the file too and that folder "security" is not the original folder where the private key resides. This is for paranoid security practitioners. (But as I usually joke with friends in the IT field, the best data security was during WordStar era, before Windows 3.11 came and before tcp/ip was introduced to home users :)/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x" title=":)" width="20"> ). Below are some screenshots from the implementation:791Views1like2CommentsRe: Ssh key based auth for Groovy Scripts Datasources
hi Martin, I happened to come across your inquiry. Just want to let you know that you can use ssh key to log into your device from collector. I have tried it and it worked well. But you need to of course copy the public key into each target device. Usual drill as you might have known.25Views0likes0Comments