NetForest – Admin

An admin is a user who has the privilege to create and modify other users in the system and can configure the indexes along with the configuration of input / filter / output files. The details on user management and indexes management is provided in the subsequent sections.

User Management

This functionality is used to handle admin activities (such as create / delete / update) and assigning permission to Dashboard, Charts, and Users.

For user management, follow the below mentioned steps:

  1. Click the Admin menu from the left pane.
  2. Then, click the Users button.

This displays a list of users in a tabular format with the following details:

  • User name: Name of the user
  • Group name: Group assigned to that user (such as admin, normal)
  • Email: Email id of the user

User can add, edit, or delete a user from the system.

Add a User

To add a new user, follow the below mentioned steps:

  1. Within the Users window, click the Add It displays the User Registration Form.

2. Specify the following details on the form and click Register:

  • User name
  • Select a group from the list or create a new one. An admin user group has the privilege to create other users and access their logs as well.
  • Email address of the user
  • Password and confirm password
Edit a User

To edit a user, follow the below mentioned steps:

  1. Select a user (from the table) to edit and click the Edit button.
  2. It displays the User Registration Form in edit mode.
  3. Edit the required information and click Register.
  4. This modified the user details as per changes.
Delete a User

To delete a user, follow the below mentioned steps:

  1. Select a user (from the table) to delete and click the Delete button.
  2. System prompts for confirmation. Click OK to confirm the deletion of the user.
  3. This deletes the selected user from the system.

Configuration UI (Indexes Management)

NFAgent is a data collection engine with real-time pipelining capabilities. NFAgent can dynamically unify data from disparate sources and normalize the data into destinations of your choice. Cleanse and democratize all your data for diverse advanced downstream analytics and visualization use cases.

While NFAgent originally drove innovation in log collection, its capabilities extend well beyond that use case. Any type of event can be enriched and transformed with a broad array of input, filter, and output plugins, with many native codecs further simplifying the ingestion process. NFAgent accelerates your insights by harnessing a greater volume and variety of data.

Configuration UI allow admin to update the Input and Output configuration file in NFAgent directly. Admin can update the plugin, path, and type in the input configuration. Admin can also update plugin, Index prefix and output host in the output configuration.

Earlier, to create and change in the NFAgent configuration files, admin has to do it from the backend. Now, by adding configuration UI, admin can do this from the UI itself. No need to go to backend to create and change in the configuration files.

Create Index

To do indexes management from configuration UI, follow the below mentioned steps:

  1. Click the Admin menu from the left pane.
  2. Then, click the Configuration button.

3. This displays a list of indexes created.

4. To create a new index, provide the tier name in the box and click Create This creates an index with the name nfagent_config_prod_<tier>.

5. Now, user can add configuration for the created index. For this, first click over the index. Then, on the right side, a section is displayed where user can add the input file, filter, and output files.

Input File

  1. Within the Input tab, click the Add This displays a section where user needs to provide the following inputs:
    • Plugin (either file or journald)
    • Path of the input file from where the logs are to be captured (for example: /tmp/access*.log*)
    • Type of log to be captured (for example: accesslog)
    • Sincedb: Path of the sincedb database file (keeps track of the current position of monitored log files) that will be written to disk. The default will write sincedb files to <path.data>/plugins/inputs/file NOTE: it must be a file path and not a directory path
    • Start Position: Choose where nfagent starts initially reading files: at the beginning or at the end. The default behavior treats files like live streams and thus starts at the end. If you have old data you want to import, set this to beginning. This option only modifies “first contact” situations where a file is new and not seen before, i.e. files that don’t have a current position recorded in a sincedb file read by nfagent. If a file has already been seen before, this option has no effect and the position recorded in the sincedb file will be used.
  2. User can add multiple blocks and provide the above details for various other logs to be captured.
  3. Once all the details for input files are mentioned, click the Save button.

Filter

  1. To add filter configurations, click the Filter tab.
  2. User can select the filter file from the drop down list or create a new one.

11. For a new filter file, click the New button, specify the rules in the area provided and click the Save button.

Output

To add the output configuration, click the Output tab. For a new Output file, click the Add button. A template is displayed to add the details. Select the plugin type, then add index Prefix (For example: attr_prod) and output host (it should be in array with double quotes For example: [“10.10.40.16:9200”]). Admin can also add multiple output hosts (For example: [“10.10.40.16:9200”,”10.10.40.19:9200”]).

Note: User can delete an index by clicking the Delete icon.

Preview

This section enables a user to see the preview of the various files, such as input, output, filter that are configured / created for indexes management.