Best Practices for Practitioners: Modules Installation and Collection
Overview LogicMonitor LogicModules are powerful templates that define how resources in your IT stack are monitored. By providing a centralized library of monitoring capabilities, these modules enable organizations to efficiently collect, alert on, and configure data from various resources regardless of location, continuously expanding monitoring capabilities through regular updates and community contributions. Key Principles Modules offer extensive customization options, allowing organizations to tailor monitoring to their specific infrastructure and requirements. The Module Toolbox provides a single, organized interface for managing and tracking module installations, updates, and configurations. Available or Optional Community-contributed modules undergo rigorous security reviews to ensure they do not compromise system integrity. Regular module updates and the ability to modify or create custom modules support evolving monitoring needs. Installation of Modules Pre-Installation Planning Environment Assessment: Review your monitoring requirements and infrastructure needs Identify dependencies between modules and packages Verify system requirements and compatibility Permission Verification: Ensure users have the required permissions: "View" and "Manage" rights for Exchange "View" and "Manage" rights for My Module Toolbox Validate Access Group assignments if applicable Installation Process Single Module Installation: Navigate to Modules > Exchange Use search and filtering to locate desired modules Review module details and documentation Select "Install" directly from the Modules table or details panel Verify successful installation in My Module Toolbox Package Installation: Evaluate all modules within the package Choose between full package or selective module installation For selective installation: Open package details panel Select specific modules needed Install modules individually Conflict Resolution: Address naming conflicts when detected Carefully consider before forcing installation over existing modules Document any forced installations for future reference Post-Installation Steps Validation: Verify modules appear in My Module Toolbox Check module status indicators Test module functionality in your environment Documentation: Record installed modules and versions Document any custom configurations Note any skipped updates or modifications Core Best Practices and Recommended Strategies Module Management Regular Updates: Consistently check for and apply module updates to ensure you have the latest monitoring capabilities and security patches. Verify changes prior to updating modules to ensure no potential loss of historic data when making changes to AppliesTo, datapoints, or active discovery Review skipped updates periodically to ensure you're not missing critical improvements. Selective Installation: Install only the modules relevant to your infrastructure to minimize complexity. When installing packages, choose specific modules that align with your monitoring requirements. Version Control: Maintain a clear record of module versions and changes. Use version notes and commit messages to document modifications. Customization and Development Custom Module Creation: Develop custom modules for unique monitoring needs, focusing initially on PropertySource, AppliesTo Function, or SNMP SysOID Maps. Ensure custom modules are well-documented and follow security best practices. Careful Customization: When modifying existing modules, understand that changes will mark the module as "Customized". Keep track of customizations to facilitate future updates and troubleshooting. Security and Access Management Access Control: Utilize Access Groups to manage module visibility and permissions. Assign roles with appropriate permissions for module management. Community Module Evaluation: Thoroughly review community-contributed modules before installation. Rely on modules with "Official" support when possible. Performance and Optimization Filtering and Organization: Utilize module filtering capabilities to efficiently manage large module collections. Create and save custom views for quick access to relevant modules. Module Usage Monitoring: Regularly review module use status to identify and remove unused or redundant modules. Optimize your module toolbox for performance and clarity. Best Practices Checklist ✅ Review module updates monthly ✅ Install only necessary modules ✅ Document all module customizations ✅ Perform security reviews of community modules ✅ Utilize Access Groups for permission management ✅ Create saved views for efficient module management ✅ Periodically clean up unused modules ✅ Maintain a consistent naming convention for custom modules ✅ Keep track of module version histories ✅ Validate module compatibility with your infrastructure Conclusion Effectively managing LogicMonitor Modules requires a strategic approach that balances flexibility, security, and performance. By following these best practices, organizations can create a robust, efficient monitoring environment that adapts to changing infrastructure needs while maintaining system integrity and performance. Additional Resources Modules Overview Modules Installation Custom Module Creation Tokens Available in LogicModule Alert Messages Deprecated LogicModules Community LM Exchange/Module ForumNew UI Impact Series - LM Exchange Improvements
In the new UI, we have made some LM Exchange Improvements to streamline the process of customizing and managing LogicModules. These improvements give users more efficient workflows and control over their monitoring environment. One new feature is a new and improved diff viewer, which provides a clear, side-by-side comparison of customized and published LogicModule versions. The diff viewer allows users to quickly identify and understand changes between different iterations of a module. Additionally, an interactive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) has been implemented to help with the build of complex AppliesTo expressions, simplifying what was once a challenging aspect of module customization. LM Exchange now offers preservation capabilities for AppliesTo and Alert Thresholds fields. This functionality enables users to retain their customizations while importing updates to LogicMonitor-authored modules, ensuring that personalized configurations are not lost during the update process with a simple toggle. Let's get into what all this means for you. By reducing the manual effort required in LogicModule management, these features allow IT professionals to allocate more time to critical monitoring and system maintenance tasks. The improved diff viewer and IDE contribute to a more intuitive customization process, potentially reducing errors and improving the overall quality of module modifications. The ability to preserve custom settings during updates addresses a long-standing challenge in balancing the need for the latest features with maintaining environment-specific configurations. Once you combine all of these, the improvements represent a significant step forward in LogicMonitor's commitment to providing a robust, user-friendly platform. Want to know more about the LM Exchange? Check out these support documentation articles: Modules Overview Modules Installation Modules Management
LM Exchange Use Cases
Can anyone share with me the design intent of LM Exchange? I would like to explore using this as a way of having my users publish LogicModules in our Non-Prod environment that can be easily imported to Production, but I’m intuiting that this is perhaps not an intended use of it. We are presently using the ‘Import from Repository’ functionality, but I know that this is legacy, and understandably a little clunky. That said, it appears that ‘publishing to LM Exchange’ results in my datasources going into Security Review, even though they are ‘Private’ visibility -- this tells me that using this to share LogicModules between my company’s portals is likely not an intended use case. Anyone have thoughts/know anything about this?Code review for modules in the exchange
@Michael Rodrigues , is there anything on the roadmap to increase the visibility of modules that are currently in review in the exchange? Has there been any official workflow created at LM where someone actually is responsible for checking these in a timely manner? https://community.logicmonitor.com/product-discussions-22/pulling-ssl-certs-from-a-local-certificate-store-3439
Feature enhancement: Preserve changes to alert thresholds when updating customized LogicModule
LogicMonitor continues to roll out more enhancements to the Module Toolbox to make viewing, updating, installing, and managing LogicModules easier than before. In release v186, it is now possible to preserve alert thresholds when updating modules to newer versions. This enhancement adds to the current ability to preserve Active Discovery filters, AppliesTo, Collection Interval, Discovery Interval, Display Name, and Group during module updates. These preservation options provide the benefit of our LogicModule team’s enhancements and fixes combined with your environment-specific customizations. To preserve your module’s alert thresholds when updating via the module Exchange, use the toggle on the right pane of the “Final Review” update window. Once you finish the module update, your alert thresholds will remain. Happy updating! Support article reference: https://www.logicmonitor.com/support/modules-management
