Universal Agents

The Universal Agents page of the Kentik portal’s Settings section is covered in the following topics:

• About the Universal Agent
• Universal Agent Status
• Universal Agents Page
• Agent Details Drawer
• Edit Agent Drawer
• Deploy the Universal Agent

Kentik’s Universal agent collects key metrics on the availability, health, and performance of your network infrastructure. The Universal agent will gradually replace all Kentik agents (see Agents) but is currently used only for NMS (see Kentik NMS Agent).

A deployed Universal agent can be in one of the following states, as indicated in the Status column of the Universal Agents List:

• Up: The agent was last seen by Kentik less than 30 minutes ago.
• Down: The agent was seen by Kentik more than 30 minutes ago.
• Not Authorized: The agent has not yet been authorized to connect to Kentik as part of the installation process.

The Universal Agents page allows you to manage all the Universal Agents deployed by your organization. To access the page, choose Settings from the portal's main navbar menu and then Universal Agents (NMS) from the Settings landing page.

The Universal Agents page includes the following UI elements:

• Auto-refresh: A checkbox that causes the Universal Agents list to refresh at regular intervals.
• Refresh: A button that manually refreshes the Universal Agents list.
• Deploy Agent: A button (visible only to Admin-level users) that opens the Deploy the Universal Agent dialog, where you can deploy an instance of the Universal agent.
• Show/Hide Filters: A button (filter icon) that toggles the Filters pane between expanded and collapsed.
• Search: A field that shows lozenges for the filters currently set in the Filters pane and enables you to enter text. The Universal Agents List will be filtered to show only rows in which there's a match between the entered text and the Name column. Click the X at the right of the field to clear entered text, and the X in a lozenge to clear the corresponding filter.
• Filters: A pane with controls that narrow the universal agents shown in the Universal Agents List (see Universal Agents Filters).
• Universal Agents List: A table listing your organization’s deployed Universal agents.

Note: While member-level users can access the page and view Universal agents, only Admin-level users can add, edit, or remove Universal agents (see About Users).

The Filters pane at the left of the Universal Agents List narrows the list to Universal agents that match specified criteria. The Filters pane includes the following controls:

• Capability: A checkbox that filters the list to agents deployed as part of Kentik’s NMS capability (see Kentik NMS Agent).
• Status: A checkbox that filters the list to agents that have a particular status, e.g. “Up”.
• Version: A field that shows a lozenge for each version (e.g. "v2.4.1") that's already been applied as a filter:
  - To add a version filter, click in the field to drop down a filterable list of agent versions, then click a version.
  - To remove a version filter, click the X in the version's lozenge.
• Site: A field that shows a lozenge for each site (see About Sites) that's already been applied as a filter:
  - To add a site filter, click in the field to drop down a filterable list of sites, then click a site.
  - To remove a site filter, click the X in the site's lozenge.

The Universal Agents List is a table that lists all deployed Universal agents for your organization. To change the sort order of the list, click a heading to select a column, then click the resulting blue up or down arrow to choose the sort direction (ascending or descending).

The Universal Agents List includes the following columns of information about each deployed Universal agent instance:

• Status: The status of the Universal agent.
• Name: The name of the Universal agent.
• CPU: The percentage of the total CPU processing bandwidth currently being used by the Universal agent.
• MEM: The percentage of the total memory bandwidth currently being used by the Universal agent.
• Public IP: The public IP address of the Universal agent.
• Private IP: The private IP address of the Universal agent.
• Site: The site name associated with the Universal agent.
• Version: The version number of the Universal agent.
• Capabilities: The capability tags associated with the Universal agent.

The Universal Agents List includes the following action buttons at the right of each agent row:

• Edit (pencil): Opens the Edit Agent Drawer which allows you to edit the properties of the Universal agent instance.
• Remove (trash): Opens a dialog enabling you to confirm that you wish to remove the Universal agent instance.

The Agent Details drawer is covered in the following topics:

• Access Agent Details
• Agent Details UI
• Agent Details Fields

The Agent Details drawer for a given agent opens at the right of the page when you do one of the following:

• In the Universal Agents List, click on the row for the agent whose details you'd like to see.
• In the Edit Agent drawer, click the Cancel button.

The Agent Details drawer includes the following UI elements:

• Close: A button that closes the drawer.
• Name: The name of the agent.
• Edit: A button that opens the Edit Agent Drawer.
• Details: Fields that show the properties of the agent (see Agent Details Fields).
• Capabilities: A pane listing related capabilities. If the pane includes an Install button for a given capability you can install the capability by clicking the button.

The properties listed in the drawer include the columns described in Universal Agents List Columns as well as the following properties:

• Host Name: The name of the host where the agent is deployed.
• Description: (only if specified): A description string specified in the agent's settings
• Closest Device: A field with two states:
  - If the Closest Network Device field is already specified in the Edit Agent Drawer, this filed shows that value.
  - If the value isn't already specified, this file is an Edit link which, when clicked, opens the Edit Agent Drawer, enabling you to specify the closest device.
• Host OS: The operating system and CPU type of the agent’s host machine.
• Created on: The date-time when the agent was created.
• Last seen on: The date-time when the agent last connected to Kentik.
• Agent ID: The ID number (integer) of the agent.
• Install ID: A unique ID (string) generated and stored on the host when the agent was installed.
• Host Machine ID: The unique ID (string) of the host, collected from the host OS.

The Edit Agent drawer for a given agent opens at the right of the page when you click the Edit button in the agent's row (see Universal Agents List Actions). The drawer is covered in the following topics:

• Edit Agent UI
• Agent Property Fields

The Edit Agent drawer includes the following UI elements:

• Cancel button: A button that closes the drawer without saving any changes.
• Name: The name of the agent.
• Save button: A button that saves changes to agent settings and exits the drawer.
• Properties: The properties of the agent (see Agent Property Fields).

The following fields show the basic properties of the Universal agent:

• Name: Your organization's name for the agent. By default, this is the host name.
• Description: An optional, user-provided description of the agent.
• Closest Network Device: A drop-down with which to specify the device in your network that is the fewest hops from the host on which the agent is installed.
  Note: This setting facilitates topology-aware device status reporting in NMS.
• Site: A field showing the site, if any, to which the agent is currently assigned, which could be a data center or a VPC in a cloud provider (see About Sites). To set or change the site, click in the field to drop down a filterable list of sites, then click on a site in the list to select it.
• Create a New Site: If a site hasn't yet been defined for the location where the agent host is located, click the button to create a new site (see Configure Site Fields).

When you click the Create a New Site button, the following fields are added to the Edit Agent drawer to enable you to enter the information required to create a new site:

• Site Name: A name for the new site.
• Street Address: The physical location of the new site, given as a street address.
• Use an Existing Site: If you decide not to create a new site, click this button to hide the Configure Site fields and instead choose a site from the Site drop-down.

The Deploy the Universal Agent dialog, which opens from the Deploy Agent button, enables you to deploy a new instance of the Universal agent. The agent can be deployed via Docker or Linux.

The use of this dialog involves the following steps:

1. Under Installation, choose whether to deploy the agent via Docker or Linux, and click the corresponding tab. The necessary command will be displayed in the text area below the tabs.
2. Use the Copy button to copy the command from the text area below the tabs.
3. Open a terminal window on the host machine and paste in the command.
4. To use a web proxy to install the agent, see Install Agent via Web Proxy.
5. Run the command. The new agent will be displayed in the Select an Agent list. The value of the Host Name column will be:
   - For Docker: The ID of the agent's Docker container.
   - For Linux: The hostname of the Linux system where the agent was installed.
6. Click the Authorize button to authorize the agent to connect with Kentik. The dialog will refresh and show some basic information that Kentik received from the agent, some optional fields, and a Continue button.
   
7. In the refreshed dialog, optionally add the Display Name, Description, and Site Name. Once ready, click the Continue button to continue to the next step of the dialog.
8. Select which capabilities you want to be enabled for this agent by clicking the toggle switch next to the capability.
   
9. Click the Finish button to complete the deployment process. Once the agent is deployed, it will be displayed on the Universal Agents List.

Note: If you close the Deploy the Universal Agent dialog before clicking the Authorize button, the agent will appear on the Universal Agents List with a “Not Authorized“ status and will not be functional. To resolve this, click the Deploy Agent button to reopen the dialog, click the Authorize button, then click through the rest of the dialog to return to the list.

To use a web proxy to install the agent, use the https_proxy environment variable to set the proxy's URL:

• Docker: Provide the environment variable as part of the docker run command:
  --env https_proxy=http://address.of.your.proxy
• Linux: Set the environment variable before running the install command:
  export https_proxy=http://address.of.your.proxy