Re: [nventory-users] using nVentory

[Yiping Z. <yip...@gm...>]

Pat:

Thanks for detailed explanation. That helps a lot.

Yiping

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Pat O'Brien <obr...@gm...> wrote:
> Hey Yiping,
>
> comments inline
>
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Yiping Zhang <yip...@gm...> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, All:
>>
>> I am currently also evaluating nVentory for our company. So far the
>> feedbacks are quite positive.
>>
>> I have a few questions about some features which I don't fully understand:
>>
>> 1) what is a "graffiti" ? What are its intended usages? Some real life
>> use cases would help me understand it better.
>
>
> graffiti is a key,value pair for nodegroups - we use it primarily for
> application deployment, configuration, and monitoring.
>
> when an application is getting deployed by jenkins, our configuration
> management system will check the nodegroup in nventory for the
> "application_port" graffiti, and set the service to listen in on that port.
> since nventory is our "source of truth", the process which generates our
> monitoring configs can be assured that it needs to monitor all hosts in the
> nodegroup on the port that "application_port" says the application is
> running on.
>
> we also have keys along the lines of "rcs_tag", "healthcheck_uri",
> "instances" (to describe how many instances of the application are running),
> and so on. this is along the same lines as "tags" but more useful IMHO.
>
>
>>
>> 2) what is a "service"? Based on attributes for a service, it appears
>> to be what we normally describe an application. Is a service tied to a
>> node, a node group or something else? What are its usages?
>
>
> Services, as far as web services and the way we use them, is to describe a
> particular web service and all of the clients of that particular webservice.
> This would be useful for setting things like nagios service dependencies.
>
> Let's say you have "Web Service B" and "Web Service C" in your
> infrastructure, and both of them rely on fetching data from "Web Service A"
> - you would create service definitions for all three, and then set "Web
> Service B" and "Web Service C" as clients of "Web Service A"
>
> We also do this with databases and key, value stores. The way this is
> helpful for something like nagios is that nagios has the concept for Service
> Dependencies as well, which means that if Service A goes down, and you have
> Service B and Service C as dependent upon Service A, only Service A will
> send you a notification. This helps cut down on the amount of noise you get
> from nagios.
>
> Hopefully this clears it up a bit - if not maybe someone else can :)
>
>>
>> 3) what is a "network port" ?  I tried to enter "80, http", I got an
>> error saying it's not included in the list, but I haven't entered
>> anything yet .  How is it to be used?
>
>
> I've never used this, but it looks like protocol refers to tcp or udp.
> judging by a quick glance at the model for network_port it looks like you
> would assign an ip address to a network port. It looks like the nventory
> ruby client doesn't make these associations for you, but I would imagine it
> would be useful if you are trying to get a list of all hosts listening on
> port n.
>
> -pat
>
>>
>> Thanks in advance for your feedbacks.
>>
>> Yiping
>>
>>
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>
>