Arista LANZ and Elasticsearch Integration

Input and output integration overview

The Arista LANZ plugin is designed for reading latency and congestion metrics from Arista LANZ, helping users monitor their network performance effectively.

The Telegraf Elasticsearch Plugin seamlessly sends metrics to an Elasticsearch server. The plugin handles template creation and dynamic index management, and supports various Elasticsearch-specific features to ensure data is formatted correctly for storage and retrieval.

Integration details

Arista LANZ

This plugin provides a consumer for use with Arista Networks’ Latency Analyzer (LANZ). Metrics are read from a stream of data via TCP through port 50001 on the switches management IP. The data is in Protobuffers format, allowing for efficient transportation and parsing of data. LANZ is utilized to monitor network latency and congestion in real-time, which is vital for maintaining optimal performance in networking environments. The underlying technology, Arista’s latency analysis, provides insights into various network operations and infrastructure behaviors, making it a crucial tool for network engineering and management.

Elasticsearch

This plugin writes metrics to Elasticsearch, a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of storing large amounts of data in near real-time. It is designed to handle Elasticsearch versions 5.x through 7.x and utilizes its dynamic template features to manage data type mapping properly. The plugin supports advanced features such as template management, dynamic index naming, and integration with OpenSearch. It also allows configurations for authentication and health monitoring of the Elasticsearch nodes.

Configuration

Arista LANZ

[[inputs.lanz]]
  ## URL to Arista LANZ endpoint
  servers = [
    "tcp://switch1.int.example.com:50001",
    "tcp://switch2.int.example.com:50001",
  ]

Elasticsearch

[[outputs.elasticsearch]]
  ## The full HTTP endpoint URL for your Elasticsearch instance
  ## Multiple urls can be specified as part of the same cluster,
  ## this means that only ONE of the urls will be written to each interval
  urls = [ "http://node1.es.example.com:9200" ] # required.
  ## Elasticsearch client timeout, defaults to "5s" if not set.
  timeout = "5s"
  ## Set to true to ask Elasticsearch a list of all cluster nodes,
  ## thus it is not necessary to list all nodes in the urls config option
  enable_sniffer = false
  ## Set to true to enable gzip compression
  enable_gzip = false
  ## Set the interval to check if the Elasticsearch nodes are available
  ## Setting to "0s" will disable the health check (not recommended in production)
  health_check_interval = "10s"
  ## Set the timeout for periodic health checks.
  # health_check_timeout = "1s"
  ## HTTP basic authentication details.
  ## HTTP basic authentication details
  # username = "telegraf"
  # password = "mypassword"
  ## HTTP bearer token authentication details
  # auth_bearer_token = "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9"

  ## Index Config
  ## The target index for metrics (Elasticsearch will create if it not exists).
  ## You can use the date specifiers below to create indexes per time frame.
  ## The metric timestamp will be used to decide the destination index name
  # %Y - year (2016)
  # %y - last two digits of year (00..99)
  # %m - month (01..12)
  # %d - day of month (e.g., 01)
  # %H - hour (00..23)
  # %V - week of the year (ISO week) (01..53)
  ## Additionally, you can specify a tag name using the notation {{tag_name}}
  ## which will be used as part of the index name. If the tag does not exist,
  ## the default tag value will be used.
  # index_name = "telegraf-{{host}}-%Y.%m.%d"
  # default_tag_value = "none"
  index_name = "telegraf-%Y.%m.%d" # required.

  ## Optional Index Config
  ## Set to true if Telegraf should use the "create" OpType while indexing
  # use_optype_create = false

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Template Config
  ## Set to true if you want telegraf to manage its index template.
  ## If enabled it will create a recommended index template for telegraf indexes
  manage_template = true
  ## The template name used for telegraf indexes
  template_name = "telegraf"
  ## Set to true if you want telegraf to overwrite an existing template
  overwrite_template = false
  ## If set to true a unique ID hash will be sent as sha256(concat(timestamp,measurement,series-hash)) string
  ## it will enable data resend and update metric points avoiding duplicated metrics with different id's
  force_document_id = false

  ## Specifies the handling of NaN and Inf values.
  ## This option can have the following values:
  ##    none    -- do not modify field-values (default); will produce an error if NaNs or infs are encountered
  ##    drop    -- drop fields containing NaNs or infs
  ##    replace -- replace with the value in "float_replacement_value" (default: 0.0)
  ##               NaNs and inf will be replaced with the given number, -inf with the negative of that number
  # float_handling = "none"
  # float_replacement_value = 0.0

  ## Pipeline Config
  ## To use a ingest pipeline, set this to the name of the pipeline you want to use.
  # use_pipeline = "my_pipeline"
  ## Additionally, you can specify a tag name using the notation {{tag_name}}
  ## which will be used as part of the pipeline name. If the tag does not exist,
  ## the default pipeline will be used as the pipeline. If no default pipeline is set,
  ## no pipeline is used for the metric.
  # use_pipeline = "{{es_pipeline}}"
  # default_pipeline = "my_pipeline"
  #
  # Custom HTTP headers
  # To pass custom HTTP headers please define it in a given below section
  # [outputs.elasticsearch.headers]
  #    "X-Custom-Header" = "custom-value"

  ## Template Index Settings
  ## Overrides the template settings.index section with any provided options.
  ## Defaults provided here in the config
  # template_index_settings = {
  #   refresh_interval = "10s",
  #   mapping.total_fields.limit = 5000,
  #   auto_expand_replicas = "0-1",
  #   codec = "best_compression"
  # }

Input and output integration examples

Arista LANZ

1. Real-Time Latency Monitoring: This plugin can be used to set up a monitoring dashboard that tracks real-time latency metrics across multiple interfaces. By gathering and visualizing this data, network admins can swiftly identify and rectify latency issues before they impact service quality. The challenge lies in efficiently handling the influx of metrics from various sources without overwhelming the infrastructure or incurring excessive processing delays.

2. Congestion Analysis for Traffic Engineering: Users can leverage the LANZ plugin to analyze congestion records, enabling the optimization of network traffic flows. By applying historical pattern recognition to the metrics collected, IT teams can make informed decisions on traffic management strategies, thus improving overall network efficiency. This requires implementing robust data storage and analysis capabilities to derive actionable insights from the raw metrics.

3. Integration with Alerting Systems: Integrate the metrics from this plugin with alerting systems to automatically notify network engineers of any significant changes in latency or congestion. By setting thresholds based on historical data trends, this use case enhances proactive incident management, allowing teams to address potential issues proactively. The technical challenge here is establishing the right balance in threshold settings to minimize false positives while ensuring genuine issues are flagged promptly.

4. Network Optimization Reports: Utilize the metrics gathered through the LANZ plugin to generate periodic reports that detail network performance, latency trends, and congestion events. These reports can help stakeholders understand network health over time and guide infrastructure investments. The challenge involves structuring and formatting the output data to make it comprehensible and actionable for various audiences.

Elasticsearch

1. Time-based Indexing: Use this plugin to store metrics in Elasticsearch to index each metric based on the time collected. For example, CPU metrics can be stored in a daily index namedtelegraf-2023.01.01, allowing easy time-based queries and retention policies.

2. Dynamic Templates Management: Utilize the template management feature to automatically create a custom template tailored to your metrics. This allows you to define how different fields are indexed and analyzed without manually configuring Elasticsearch, ensuring an optimal data structure for querying.

3. OpenSearch Compatibility: If you are using AWS OpenSearch, you can configure this plugin to work seamlessly by activating compatibility mode, ensuring your existing Elasticsearch clients remain functional and compatible with newer cluster setups.

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