[Assimilation] Welcome! Progress report on the Assimilation Project
Alan Robertson
alanr at unix.sh
Tue Jul 17 10:27:37 MDT 2012
Hi Avi,
Great to hear from you!
It's hard to understand the graph with all the links on the picture at
once - and it's hard to display that much detail on the web. I'll write
up more parts of the graph over the next 2 or 3 weeks and put them on my
blog. It takes time to write these things...
Also, it will give me time to add more data to the graph - like the
application dependencies. In the end, I'll put in a graph with all
the relationships in it. It'll just be big and complex - especially by
the time I add in services and clients...
I also didn't talk about the attributes that the nodes in the graph have.
By convention, every node has two attributes: nodetype and name. When I
create a node that has an index, I index the 'name' field.
The nodetype attribute is things like Drone, Ring, IPaddr, NIC, etc...
Which all showed in the graph on the web site, and which determines
which index the node is indexed in. There is also another set of _type_
relationships that show up on the full graph.
It's not really ready to install yet anywhere but on my home network
yet. A potential contributor wants to build packages. Sounds like I
need to take her up on it ;-).
But when it's ready to install and play with - you'll find out first on
twitter and no more than a few days later on this mailing list.
On 07/17/2012 10:08 AM, Avi Alkalay wrote:
> Alan, I think this project is very important, useful and cool.
>
> I'v been reading your blog and I miss some visual examples on how a
> more complex dependency graph looks like. A more visual understanding
> about the components of Assimlation, where each part of it runs and
> what they do. And once the graph is built, how to further document it
> with some human notes ?
>
> Also, I'd like to run this stuff and see the graph for my home network !
> But don't have the time to compile it, so do you have binary packages ?
>
> Regards
>
> AVI ALKALAY ♦ אבי אלקלעי
> information architect • software engineer • hacker
> digital media • security • mobility • business intelligence
>
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>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Alan Robertson <alanr at unix.sh
> <mailto:alanr at unix.sh>> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Let me start off by welcoming you to the mailing list, and
> announcing a
> new blog post on a piece of our Neo4j graph schema. This is the
> first in
> a series of posts on the schema - I have a few more in mind in the
> short
> term, and will likely add more as the project progresses and we
> add more
> features and capabilities.
>
> You can find my blog here:
> http://bit.ly/LWczIV [ or techthoughts.typepad.com
> <http://techthoughts.typepad.com>]
>
> A permalink for the schema post is:
> http://bit.ly/O5IkNr
>
> Here's the current status on the Assimilation project:
>
> - Nanoprobe code boots up, and connects the the CMA (Collective
> Management Authority)
> it performs a 'netconfig' discovery and sends the results
> along
> - CMA connects nanoprobes into heartbeating rings
> - Nanoprobe code obeys requests to set up and tear down heartbeat
> relationships
> - CMA code requests for the Nanoprobes to run a few discovery
> actions
> + tcplisteners - discover TCP-based services being offered
> + arpcache - discover servers we're talking to
> + os - discovers OS versions and characteristics
> + cpu - discovers host CPU characteristics
>
> - CMA code also stashes away the discovery data in the database
> - in
> plain JSON text format.
> the exception is for the netconfig discovery data - which it
> makes into nodes and
> relationships in the database.
>
> I recently rewrote tcplisteners to retain the structure of which ports
> and addresses an application is listening on without including the pid
> in the JSON output.
>
> My planned next action is to write a 'tcpclients' discovery agent
> to be
> the complement of tcplisteners, and integrate the contents of
> these two
> into the database - so that the dependencies become obvious.
>
> Right now, we don't have an infrastructure for processing JSON
> discovery
> data and creating nodes and relationships in the database. I'll
> have to
> write that before writing the code for integrating discovery data into
> the database.
>
> There is a huge amount of work yet to do to accomplish the full
> vision.
> But I still have it in mind to have a useful release by the end of the
> year. Needless to say, it won't be the 'full vision'.
>
> In the past Roger Massey has helped with the Windows port, but he
> seems
> to have dropped off the grid. I have another person joining the
> team in
> the near future, but we're always looking for more.
>
> I think the biggest opportunity for this project is for
> visualization of
> the state a the data center in a way that helps problem solving,
> planning, documentation and understanding. Given all the incredibly
> interesting up-to-date data we will have, showing what people want
> in a
> way that helps create insight will be a very rewarding challenge.
>
> Again, Welcome to the Mailing List!
>
> --
> Alan Robertson <alanr at unix.sh> - @OSSAlanR
>
> "Openness is the foundation and preservative of friendship... Let
> me claim from you at all times your undisguised opinions." -
> William Wilberforce
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>
>
--
Alan Robertson <alanr at unix.sh> - @OSSAlanR
"Openness is the foundation and preservative of friendship... Let me claim from you at all times your undisguised opinions." - William Wilberforce
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