Agents Overview

This article provides a high-level overview of software agents used with Kentik.

Note: The software agents described here are available for both Debian/Ubuntu and CentOS/RHEL.

About Kentik Agents

Kentik uses various software agents to gather data and perform tasks supporting the platform. These tasks include:

Collecting metrics data for NMS via SNMP and Streaming Telemetry (see Universal Agent).
Encrypting flow data (see Encryption Agent).
Collecting and sending flow from a host, (see Host Agent).
Performing synthetic testing (see Kentik Synthetics Agents).
Monitoring Kubernetes clusters, (see Kentik Kubernetes Agents).
Sending Kentik-enriched flow records to an external system (see Using Kentik Firehose).

Universal Agent

Kentik's Universal Agent is a single agent that handles various tasks previously handled by specialized agents. Customers deploy only the Universal Agent, enabling/disabling its capabilities based on their needs and deployment location. The Universal Agent will gradually replace all Kentik agents. Manage Universal Agents via the portal's Universal Agents page.

Encryption Agent

Kentik’s kproxy software agent is a NetFlow proxy that encrypts flow records (NetFlow v5/v9, IPFIX, and sFlow) before forwarding them to Kentik. It collects and encrypts flow and SNMP from routers and switches locally. A single instance of kproxy can redirect flow for multiple routers and switches, handling rate limiting, resampling, and encryption. Multiple hosts can run kproxy to distribute traffic and load.

For information on configuring kproxy, see Kentik Proxy Agent. Once installed and configured, an instance can be managed in the v4 portal via the kproxy Agents page.

Note: Host agent mode is no longer supported for kproxy. It’s now used only as a NetFlow proxy agent.

Host Agent

Kentik customers can collect and send flow records from hosts via the kprobe agent. kprobe runs on a registered host machine, reporting flow for one or more interfaces. It "sniffs" traffic from the host's Ethernet port(s), creates flow records, and sends them to Kentik (see Host Configuration).