Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
list Kimberly McKinnis
I saw the recent thread regarding using bbproxy to replicate the display, and would like to do something similar. However, ideally, what I'd like is to use something like bbrelay to have the clients report to both hobbit and bb, while I get hobbit fully set up. I know the alert structure is a little different, and I'd like to have time to tweak things and such instead of doing an abrupt cutover. Is it possible to have the clients actually report to both servers, such that both bb and hobbit will process the data (as bbnets or whatever). I googled hobbit and bbrelay but didn't come up with too much. Will bbrelay do what I want, or does it just forward the reports instead of processing it on both servers? I want BB to remain fully functional for the time being, as I'm monitoring over 2000 machines with paging and ext and pg scripts which kick off other things.
list Vernon Everett
Hi
The short answer is yes.
We have a 3rd party (they provide Dc services) that use Big Brother.
Since I joined the company, I started using Hobbit, but had to do so
without disrupting their Big Brother.
I have also started migrating some of our servers to Hobbit client.
We now have BB-client and Hobbit client running on our servers,
reporting to Hobbit in our offices, and Big Brother server at our data
centre hosts.
It gets a little confusing, but keeps things interesting :-)
Do you have a more specific question?
Regards
Vernon
No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many
electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
▸
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly McKinnis [mailto:user-14c9913b173c@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2005 9:42 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
I saw the recent thread regarding using bbproxy to replicate the
display, and would like to do something similar. However, ideally, what
I'd like is to use something like bbrelay to have the clients report to
both hobbit and bb, while I get hobbit fully set up. I know the alert
structure is a little different, and I'd like to have time to tweak
things and such instead of doing an abrupt cutover. Is it possible to
have the clients actually report to both servers, such that both bb and
hobbit will process the data (as bbnets or whatever). I googled hobbit
and bbrelay but didn't come up with too much. Will bbrelay do what I
want, or does it just forward the reports instead of processing it on
both servers? I want BB to remain fully functional for the time being,
as I'm monitoring over 2000 machines with paging and ext and pg scripts
which kick off other things.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
NOTICE: This message and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright material
of Australian Finance Group Limited or a third party. It is intended solely for the purpose of the
addressee and any other named recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, any use,
distribution, disclosure or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. The confidentiality attached
to this message is not waived or lost by reason of the mistaken transmission or delivery to any
unintended party. If you have received this message in error, please notify the author immediately or
contact Australian Finance Group on +61 8 9420 7888.
list Kimberly McKinnis
:) so my specific question is... to make my clients report to both servers I only add the hobbit server as a bbrelay in the bb server's bb-host file? I'm not understanding the steps I need to take to run them in parallel. At the moment, I have a hobbit server running completely seperately and just pinging hosts, no clients are reporting to it.
▸
-----Original Message-----
From: Vernon Everett [mailto:user-99fc6b22a3a3@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Monday, November 07, 2005 6:02 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: RE: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
Hi
The short answer is yes.
We have a 3rd party (they provide Dc services) that use Big Brother.
Since I joined the company, I started using Hobbit, but had to do so
without disrupting their Big Brother.
I have also started migrating some of our servers to Hobbit client.
We now have BB-client and Hobbit client running on our servers,
reporting to Hobbit in our offices, and Big Brother server at our data
centre hosts.
It gets a little confusing, but keeps things interesting :-)
Do you have a more specific question?
Regards
Vernon
No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many
electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly McKinnis [mailto:user-14c9913b173c@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2005 9:42 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
I saw the recent thread regarding using bbproxy to replicate the
display, and would like to do something similar. However, ideally, what
I'd like is to use something like bbrelay to have the clients report to
both hobbit and bb, while I get hobbit fully set up. I know the alert
structure is a little different, and I'd like to have time to tweak
things and such instead of doing an abrupt cutover. Is it possible to
have the clients actually report to both servers, such that both bb and
hobbit will process the data (as bbnets or whatever). I googled hobbit
and bbrelay but didn't come up with too much. Will bbrelay do what I
want, or does it just forward the reports instead of processing it on
both servers? I want BB to remain fully functional for the time being,
as I'm monitoring over 2000 machines with paging and ext and pg scripts
which kick off other things.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _
NOTICE: This message and any attachments are confidential and may
contain copyright material of Australian Finance Group Limited or a
third party. It is intended solely for the purpose of the addressee and
any other named recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, any
use, distribution, disclosure or copying of this message is strictly
prohibited. The confidentiality attached to this message is not waived
or lost by reason of the mistaken transmission or delivery to any
unintended party. If you have received this message in error, please
notify the author immediately or contact Australian Finance Group on +61
8 9420 7888.
list Vernon Everett
Hi I never touched the BB-server. (It isn't under my control) I changed the clients. (A pain if you have many monitored clients) If you add the Hobbit server to the client bb-hosts file as a display server, all the nateive and correctly configured tests will start sending results to the Hobbit server. Like this. # cat bb-hosts 192.168.8.15 samwise # BBDISPLAY BBPAGER <--- the original BB server 192.168.8.1 webserve # http://webserve/ 192.168.8.2 appserv1 # 192.168.8.3 appserv2 # 192.168.8.4 dbserve # 192.168.8.6 devserve # 192.168.0.16 frodo # BBDISPLAY BBPAGER <--- added by me (our first hobbit server) 192.168.0.14 shire # BBDISPLAY BBPAGER <--- added by me (our new hobbit server) (We have 2 hobbit servers because I am busy migrating to a more stable platform) All tests that are "native" to BB will start sending results to all servers with the BBDISPLAY parameter in bb-hosts. Most of the external tests have this line which sends the status. $BB $BBDISP "status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date` - $STATUS $LINE" The $BBDISP varaible will be automatically populated with the BBDISPLAY servers from the bb-hosts file (See above) The less cleverly written tests might have a line like this. $BB 192.168.0.16 "status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date` - $STATUS $LINE" If you want to send you results to a second or even a third server, keep adding lines. $BB 192.168.0.16 "status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date` - $STATUS $LINE" $BB 192.168.0.14 "status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date` - $STATUS $LINE" This is a cute trick which is useful if you only want to send results to one hobbit/bb server and not all of them. As in my case, there is a BB server, which I am not to disrupt. However, you might also want to limit what gets reported on the "business user" display, and what gets reported to your own server. Run 2 servers, and limit output to the business one, and send the extra infor to your private one. It is very useful if you have jumpy non-tech people who phone you every time ANYTHING goes red. :-) Hope this helps.
▸
Regards
Vernon
No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many
electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
-----Original Message-----
▸
From: Kimberly McKinnis [mailto:user-14c9913b173c@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2005 10:21 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: RE: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
:) so my specific question is... to make my clients report to both
servers I only add the hobbit server as a bbrelay in the bb server's
bb-host file? I'm not understanding the steps I need to take to run them
in parallel. At the moment, I have a hobbit server running completely
seperately and just pinging hosts, no clients are reporting to it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Vernon Everett [mailto:user-99fc6b22a3a3@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Monday, November 07, 2005 6:02 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: RE: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
Hi
The short answer is yes.
We have a 3rd party (they provide Dc services) that use Big Brother.
Since I joined the company, I started using Hobbit, but had to do so
without disrupting their Big Brother.
I have also started migrating some of our servers to Hobbit client.
We now have BB-client and Hobbit client running on our servers,
reporting to Hobbit in our offices, and Big Brother server at our data
centre hosts.
It gets a little confusing, but keeps things interesting :-)
Do you have a more specific question?
Regards
Vernon
No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many
electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly McKinnis [mailto:user-14c9913b173c@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2005 9:42 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
I saw the recent thread regarding using bbproxy to replicate the
display, and would like to do something similar. However, ideally, what
I'd like is to use something like bbrelay to have the clients report to
both hobbit and bb, while I get hobbit fully set up. I know the alert
structure is a little different, and I'd like to have time to tweak
things and such instead of doing an abrupt cutover. Is it possible to
have the clients actually report to both servers, such that both bb and
hobbit will process the data (as bbnets or whatever). I googled hobbit
and bbrelay but didn't come up with too much. Will bbrelay do what I
want, or does it just forward the reports instead of processing it on
both servers? I want BB to remain fully functional for the time being,
as I'm monitoring over 2000 machines with paging and ext and pg scripts
which kick off other things.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _
NOTICE: This message and any attachments are confidential and may
contain copyright material of Australian Finance Group Limited or a
third party. It is intended solely for the purpose of the addressee and
any other named recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, any
use, distribution, disclosure or copying of this message is strictly
prohibited. The confidentiality attached to this message is not waived
or lost by reason of the mistaken transmission or delivery to any
unintended party. If you have received this message in error, please
notify the author immediately or contact Australian Finance Group on +61
8 9420 7888.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
NOTICE: This message and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright material
of Australian Finance Group Limited or a third party. It is intended solely for the purpose of the
addressee and any other named recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, any use,
distribution, disclosure or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. The confidentiality attached
to this message is not waived or lost by reason of the mistaken transmission or delivery to any
unintended party. If you have received this message in error, please notify the author immediately or
contact Australian Finance Group on +61 8 9420 7888.
list Henrik Størner
Hi Kimberly,
▸
On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 05:41:53PM -0800, Kimberly McKinnis wrote:I saw the recent thread regarding using bbproxy to replicate the display, and would like to do something similar. However, ideally, what I'd like is to use something like bbrelay to have the clients report to both hobbit and bb, while I get hobbit fully set up.
So you are going to run BB and Hobbit in parallel, on different servers, and just want to feed Hobbit with the data the flows into your current BB system - with as few changes as possible.
▸
I know the alert structure is a little different, and I'd like to have time to tweak things and such instead of doing an abrupt cutover. Is it possible to have the clients actually report to both servers, such that both bb and hobbit will process the data (as bbnets or whatever).
I think "BBRELAY:ip.of.hobbit.server" on you BB server will do what you want. I've never used BBRELAY myself, but the docs and the bbd source code points in that direction. There are two things you should be aware of with this. First, it will obvious add some load to your BB server. All incoming messages must be copied out to the Hobbit server, and BB does that by forking (twice) a child process for each incoming message. If your BB server is running with a high load, you should keep an eye on it to see if it can handle the extra load that BBRELAY puts on it. If that turns out to be a problem, then an alternative way of doing this is to use Hobbit's bbproxy tool on your BB server: Change BB to listen on port 1985 (the BBPORT setting in recent BB installs), and run bbproxy on port 1984 with it forwarding to the local BB on port 1985, and the remote Hobbit server. Second, the Hobbit server will be fed ALL status messages from the BB server - including the BB servers network test results. So perhaps you should start out with the [bbnet] task disabled in Hobbit, and only run the display part of Hobbit - if you do run network tests in both BB and Hobbit, your Hobbit server will get updates from both sources. If they happen to disagree on a status, you'll see it flapping between the BB-determined status and the Hobbit-determined status. And a final tip: Use a dummy script to handle alert e-mails while you test the Hobbit server - change the MAIL and MAILC settings in hobbitserver.cfg to run the dummy instead of the real "mail" command. It is not funny to get all alerts in duplicates...
▸
I want BB to remain fully functional for the time being, as I'm monitoring over 2000 machines with paging and ext and pg scripts which kick off other things.
That will be interesting, it is an installation about the same size as my own. Regards, Henrik
list Charles Jones
▸
Henrik Stoerner wrote:
I think "BBRELAY:ip.of.hobbit.server" on you BB server will do what you want. I've never used BBRELAY myself, but the docs and the bbd source code points in that direction.
Just thought I would report that I am using this exact method of running a bb and hobbit server in parallel (while I test alert rules and such for hobbit). I have been running this way for awhile with no problems, except in a case where I had a server disabled/maint mode on bb, but not in hobbit...hobbit actually showed the blue status dots, but once they turned red hobbit still complained until I disabled it there too :) -Charles
list Kimberly McKinnis
Thanks Heinrik :) You rock The bbproxy sounds like a better way to go. I'd read about it in the docs, but wasn't completely clear on the application. Thanks again :)
▸
-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Monday, November 07, 2005 10:58 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Clients reporting to both a BB server and Hobbit
Hi Kimberly,
On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 05:41:53PM -0800, Kimberly McKinnis wrote:I saw the recent thread regarding using bbproxy to replicate the display, and would like to do something similar. However, ideally, what I'd like is to use something like bbrelay to have the clients report to both hobbit and bb, while I get hobbit fully set up.
So you are going to run BB and Hobbit in parallel, on different servers, and just want to feed Hobbit with the data the flows into your current BB system - with as few changes as possible.
I know the alert structure is a little different, and I'd like to have time to tweak things and such instead of doing an abrupt cutover. Is it possible to have the clients actually report to both servers, such that both bb and hobbit will process the data (as bbnets or whatever).
I think "BBRELAY:ip.of.hobbit.server" on you BB server will do what you want. I've never used BBRELAY myself, but the docs and the bbd source code points in that direction. There are two things you should be aware of with this. First, it will obvious add some load to your BB server. All incoming messages must be copied out to the Hobbit server, and BB does that by forking (twice) a child process for each incoming message. If your BB server is running with a high load, you should keep an eye on it to see if it can handle the extra load that BBRELAY puts on it. If that turns out to be a problem, then an alternative way of doing this is to use Hobbit's bbproxy tool on your BB server: Change BB to listen on port 1985 (the BBPORT setting in recent BB installs), and run bbproxy on port 1984 with it forwarding to the local BB on port 1985, and the remote Hobbit server. Second, the Hobbit server will be fed ALL status messages from the BB server - including the BB servers network test results. So perhaps you should start out with the [bbnet] task disabled in Hobbit, and only run the display part of Hobbit - if you do run network tests in both BB and Hobbit, your Hobbit server will get updates from both sources. If they happen to disagree on a status, you'll see it flapping between the BB-determined status and the Hobbit-determined status. And a final tip: Use a dummy script to handle alert e-mails while you test the Hobbit server - change the MAIL and MAILC settings in hobbitserver.cfg to run the dummy instead of the real "mail" command. It is not funny to get all alerts in duplicates...
I want BB to remain fully functional for the time being, as I'm monitoring over 2000 machines with paging and ext and pg scripts which kick off other things.
That will be interesting, it is an installation about the same size as my own. Regards, Henrik