Introduction to User Defined REST API Polling

Introduction

Overall process

Enhanced user defined poller functionality

Poller workflow

User permissions

Licensing

Certificates for REST collectors

Multi-server support

Introduction:

The user defined REST API polling allows you to add support for network devices, software-defined platforms, and applications that provide data via REST APIs. This is an extension to the other methods by which you can extend or add monitoring for new devices and technologies (user defined polling and webhooks).

Newly-polled attributes supported by REST API polling are integrated with the Entuity data model, and are visible and accessible throughout the UI in the same way that other attributes are, e.g. in dashlets such as Object Attributes, Object Associations and Key Info.

Overall process:

1. Define enhanced user defined poller, either via the Entuity UI or the Entuity RESTful API functionality.
2. Poller allows user defined attributes to be populated via REST API calls.
3. Each attribute automatically stores historical stream data.

Enhanced user defined poller functionality:

• The poller defines the Entuity device type to which it is applicable. It also provides a filter to further restrict which devices it applies to. Only devices of the correct type (which pass the filter) will incur license usage. For further help and information on licensing in Entuity, please see this section.
• For devices of the correct type that pass the filter, an associated object is created via a 1-to-1 associated object named specifically for that poller. If multiple pollers are applicable, there is one associated object for each poller, each via a separate associated object.
• The associated object and attributes only appears on devices of the correct type. They are empty (null) for any devices that do not pass the filter.
• From Entuity v20.0 P03 upwards, you can specify a new Sub Component type of user defined REST poller. Through this you can define a user defined REST poller that populates multiple sub components of an existing object (device or otherwise) managed within the Entuity StormWorks data model. The poller can also populate sub components over multiple levels, where the components at each level can themselves have multiple sub components to an arbitrary depth. All data within the same user defined REST poller, and therefore all data within a specific hierarchy, are polled at the same frequency and therefore keep time.

Poller workflow:

• A poller can contain multiple steps. Each step can define variables that take their value from data obtained within that step which then becaome available to subsequent steps, and utilize variable values defined in any earlier step.
• This allows support for e.g. multi-step authentication, where it may be necessary to make an initial request using a username-password to obtain an API Key, which is then passed as a header field (like a cookie) into a subsequent request. Another example might be when you are required to make one request to discover the unique key of a device from its name and then use that unique key when looking up further information on the device.

User permissions:

Users require admin privileges or the User Defined Polling tool permission in order to create or modify user defined API pollers. Please see this article for help and information on user permissions in Entuity.

Licensing:

If a user defined REST poller is added to a device that is already managed by Entuity, then no license credit is charged.

Each sub object created by a Sub Component user defined REST poller consumes one Objects license credit (in Entuity v20.0, each consumed one Associated Items license credit), regardless of the type of parent object to which they are attached (and regardless of whether the parent object consumes a license credit). Note for Entuity v20.0: in this case, if you have a license that has unlimited Associated Items license credits, you will still need an additional associated device credit for each sub object.

Please see this section for help and information on licensing in Entuity.

Certificates for REST collectors:

Entuity REST collectors require a device have the correct certificate. If a device has a self-signed certificate, then the device will not be added.

For non-production deployments (test environments), you can disable strict certificate checking. Note, this is not recommended for production environment. To disable strict certificate checking, navigate to the following file:

[entuity install]/etc/CollectionEngine/cecfg.properties

In this file, there is the property:

trustAllCertificates=[value]

If set to 'true', certificate checking will be removed. The property might be commented with a preceding # sign (e.g. #trustAllCertificates=true), in which case you will need to remove the # for the property to be recognized.

For user defined polling of vcenters to work, the property trustAllCertificates must be set to 'true'.

Multi-server support:

When a user defined REST poller is created via the UI, it will automatically be created on all remote servers (except hidden servers).

If a user defined REST poller is created via the RESTful API functionality, the poller will be created only on a single specified server.