Introduction¶
There’s a lot to know about infoset-ng
which we’ll summarize here.
Features¶
infoset-ng
has the following features:
- Open source.
- Written in python, a modern language.
- Easy configuration.
- Uses the well known Flask webserver for accepting data and responding to requests.
infoset-ng
has a number of fault tolerant features aimed at making it resilient in unstable computing environemnts.- MariaDB / MySQL database backend
- Database connection pooling to reduce database load.
- Ingestion of data supports parallel multiprocessing for maximum speed.
- The infoset-ng-ng API server can tolerate the loss of communication with its database by caching the data locally until the database returns online.
- The
infoset-ng
configuration is entirely stored in files. This allows it to collect data in the absense of a database, such as during maintenance or an outage. - Backups are simple. Just save the entire contents of the
infoset-ng
directory tree including hidden files, and save a copy of the database for your performance data.
We are always looking for more contributors!
Inspiration / History¶
The infoset-ng
project originally took inspiration from the
SourceForge based switchmap
project. switchmap
was written in
PERL and designed to create tabular representations of network
topologies. Early versions of infoset
eventually had expanded
features which included the polling of network devices for real time
performance data. This data was presented via a web interface. The code
became cumbersome and the original infoset
was split into three
componet parts.
infoset-ng
: An API for storing and retrieving real time data.garnet
: A network / server performance charting web application that uses various types of agents for collecting real time data.garnet
usesinfoset-ng
to store its data.switchmap-ng
A python 3 based feature equivalent version ofswitchmap
.
Each of these projects resides on the University of the West Indies Computing Society’s GitHub account.
Oversight¶
infoset-ng
is a student collaboration between:
- The University of the West Indies Computing Society. (Kingston, Jamaica)
- The University of Techology, IEEE Student Branch. (Kingston, Jamaica)
- The Palisadoes Foundation http://www.palisadoes.org
And many others.