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Ability to Create Meta (Fake) Nodes

I would like the ability to create meta nodes that are just there for the purposes of attaching applications. 

The External node functionality is 98% of the way there; however it still requires a unique IP Address (or at least something that resembles one).  If I was able to create External nodes without IP addresses this would be perfect.

  • Don't think this is possible today, but as a workaround, I put in www.google.com and added it as external and then renamed it after to Brandon and it took this.  You just can then ignore the IP Address.

  • What specifically did you put in www.google.com for and rename to Brandon, the name (label) of the Node? 

    I tried to change the IP of an already existing External Node to something that isn't an IP and it didn't work, it requires it to be in the format of an IP x.x.x.x

    A simple enhancement to the External node would be to remove the requirement for an IP at all.  It obviously needs to have it as an option for applications or pollers that require that, but it doesn't need to be required.

    The second option would to be to create a new node type in Orion called Meta Node, it would be the same as an External Node, but no IP at all.

    Thoughts?

  • So I added a new node with external and instead of entering an ip, I entered www.google.com and then on edit changed www.google.com to Brandon.

    Can you elaborate on how you would use this?

  • Can you elaborate on how you would use this?

    Sure thing!

    We have a colocation facility with cabinets that customers lease.  The primary services associated with a colocation cabinet are Power, Cooling, and Pipe (bandwidth).  With Orion I want to be able to monitor these as they are the service that we provide.  I have bandwidth covered because there is a networking port associated with the cabinet so I am good there. 

    With Power and Cooling, we have systems that capture that data and I can get it into Orion with scripts (via APM) that people much more capable than I have brewed up for me.  Each Power and Temperature measurement is associated with a colocation cabinet and therefore I wish to represent each cabinet as a node and attach the power and temp measurements as APM components.  To do this I need to create meta-nodes representing the cabinets that have no IP associated with them as they are not devices.

    This is my current use case, I have had a few others in the past.  I realize that this may be me trying to really push the limits of Orion but I figure it can't hurt t ask.  = )

  • More and more I am finding that I could really use this.  Having non-IP based objects to attach APM stuff to would allow us to do some very nice facility stuff that we could then restrict to specific users with custom properties. 

    With our new data-center there is a huge push here and more and more my executives are looking to Orion to be able to provide the portal for both internal and customer facing information.

    One of our internal developers has found some very cool ways to get data into Orion using APM scripts but the problem has become displaying it in a helpful way.



  • If I was able to create External nodes without IP addresses this would be perfect.



    Would adding nodes with a loopback address work for your situation?

  • Would adding nodes with a loopback address work for your situation?

    No, this would not work.  The thing is what I want to add doesn't have a loopback interface because it isn't a node at all.  It's simply a container or object to attach other things to.

  • Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant a generic loopback address, not the loopback interface. Since you have everything from 127.0.0.1 to 127.255.255.254 available, I believe any number of fake nodes would be available to you.

  • Idea makes sense. Can't think of a use case I'd have for it but having the concept of a container in addition to the standard ip object I'm sure would open new doors

  • Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant a generic loopback address, not the loopback interface. Since you have everything from 127.0.0.1 to 127.255.255.254 available, I believe any number of fake nodes would be available to you.

    Yes, it is possible to do this and it is what I am currently doing.  The problem is now I am having to track and manage "fake" IP addresses when it seems that should be totally unnecessary.