Accumulating Telemetry for Customized Dashboarding

This text is authored by Matt Schmitz,
Technical Options Specialist,
Cisco’s World Digital Engineering (GVE) DevNet workforce.
Go to the GVE DevNet GitHub web page 

Networks proceed to get extra advanced with so many new gadgets and providers to help – however there’s one fixed that by no means modifications: the necessity for good monitoring instruments! It’s all about having the fitting information factors on the proper time and offered in the fitting manner.
With IoT sensors changing into extra frequent & many gadgets coming with embedded sensors, we’ve got extra info accessible than ever earlier than. Now the query turns into: “How will we use all of this info?” Whereas some sensors might provide their very own customized instruments or reporting software program, others may solely expose an API. In both case, the metrics received’t be useful if we will’t discover or use the info in a manner that works for us.

So how will we carry all of our sensor telemetry right into a single place and show it in a helpful manner? One methodology is to put in writing scripts to question all our sensors & gadgets, then push these information factors right into a time-series database, like InfluxDB. As soon as we’ve got all that information collected in a single place, we will use Grafana to create customized dashboards to maintain observe of what we care about. This fashion we will pull all of our telemetry into one single reporting instrument, then construct customized graphs & dashboards to show the info precisely how we want it.

What may this appear like in observe? Nicely, let’s check out just a few examples of the place our workforce helped Cisco clients construct customized reporting instruments.
Whereas every instance under had distinctive gadgets and challenges, the overall purpose was the identical: Accumulate telemetry to make use of for customized dashboarding, reporting, and/or alerting. In every case we utilized a bit little bit of customized code to gather metrics from gadgets & import them into an Inflow database. Then, we constructed dashboards in Grafana to show historic & real-time information in a manner that helped handle the shopper’s distinctive challenges.

DOM Telemetry Monitoring

On this instance, we labored with a buyer who was in search of a greater option to proactively monitor their massive fiber-based community. Utilizing the Digital Optical Monitoring (DOM) telemetry supplied by the fiber transceivers, they may look ahead to efficiency developments & get alerted shortly when points occurred. Our workforce used a mix of Python & Ansible to periodically question community gadgets for the optical telemetry. The collected telemetry was used to construct a dashboard that confirmed real-time & trending well being statistics. Optionally, the shopper may allow Webex push notifications when transceivers exceeded predefined thresholds. This enabled the shopper to shortly reply to degrading connection well being & handle points earlier than service-impacting outages occurred. Try pattern code & directions within the DOM Telemetry repo.

Meraki MT Dashboard

On this instance, we had a buyer who needed to maintain observe of temperature deviations between sizzling & chilly aisles of their information heart. The shopper had already bought Meraki MT temperature sensors and deployed them to every rack. Nevertheless, they needed a greater methodology of aggregating & visualizing the temperature and humidity information. To fulfill the shopper’s wants, we constructed a customized flask dashboard that displayed every row of racks & the present temperatures on every sensor. This helped create a simple visualization for buyer engineers to find temperature deviations in every row. This dashboard included mixture graphs to show historic & trending information for every sizzling or chilly aisle. Try pattern code & directions within the Meraki MT repo.

PoE Measurement

For our last instance, we would have liked to supply a customized system to observe vitality utilization inside a brand new industrial constructing. The constructing was outfitted with good lighting powered by Cisco’s Catalyst Digital Constructing (CDB) Switches. Since all the lights within the constructing can be powered by Energy over Ethernet (PoE), we have been capable of question the CDB switches to gather energy consumption on a per-port foundation. Offering this telemetry in a dashboard format allowed the shopper to maintain observe of vitality utilization throughout the constructing, which enabled them to satisfy their price & sustainability objectives. Try pattern code & directions within the PoE Measurement repo.

Get pattern code & directions

Lately there may be greater than sufficient information accessible to deal with our monitoring & reporting wants, however we simply want to determine one of the simplest ways to make the most of that info. With a bit little bit of customized code & just a few nice open-source instruments, it’s simpler than ever to construct easy monitoring and reporting dashboards.

For those who’re fascinated about studying extra concerning the examples, take a look at the hyperlinks under. Every repository accommodates the pattern code & directions for the right way to use it in your personal community:

About our GVE workforce

The World Digital Engineering (GVE) DevNet workforce works with Cisco clients to assist carry their automation concepts to life. Along with Cisco Account Groups, we discover alternatives the place clients want a bit assist getting began with automation or integration tasks. We develop easy examples to showcase what is feasible with a bit little bit of customized code. Many of those instance tasks are printed on the GVE DevNet GitHub web page and shared with the group.

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