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Configure

Jobs & reports access restrictions (ACL)​

You can restrict access for generating or viewing reports to specific groups by configuring the Access Control List (ACL).

The report design filter enables you to:

  • Allow access to report design templates when creating a new job.

The job filter enables you to enable a user to:

  • View generated reports ("Report View" page).
  • View jobs, and create and modify them ("Jobs" page).
  • Receive generated reports by e-mail.

To manage Centreon MBI rules, go to the following page: `Administration > ACL > Centreon MBI > ACL Rules

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To modify or add a new rule, use this menu, which has three menu tabs:

The "General information" menu shows the pre-defined access groups that can be linked to a rule.

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The "report designs" menu shows the report designs and report design groups that can be linked to a rule.

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The final menu under the "Jobs" tab shows the scheduled jobs that can be linked to a rule. If no report design has been selected in the previous menu, no scheduled task will appear here.

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Important

Non-administrator users cannot receive notification for reports they are not authorized to view even if they are associated with a contact group eligible for notification.

You can assign read-only access to users on the ACL for viewing the content of other Centreon menus. These include:

  • Job groups
  • Report designs
  • Report design groups
  • Logos
  • Publication rules.

We strongly advise against giving a limited user access to the "General options" page, which would allow him or her to modify the configuration.

General Options​

Centreon MBI general options are used to configure:

  • Scheduling options for jobs that generate reports
  • Communication between Centreon & the reporting server
  • Notification parameters for Centreon MBI administrators
  • Data to agregate & retention (ETL)

Notification options​

The reporting engine can notify Centreon MBI administrators by e-mail after each report generation. The e-mail includes:

  • The direct download links to the reports
  • Log file pertaining to the job that generated the reports.

Centreon MBI administrators can thus be informed if any job fails. This notification, however, is different from publication by e-mail of the actual reports sent to specific users. The notification option sends an e-mail to Centreon MBI administrators containing only the logs of the job that generated the report.

The notification option parameters can be modified in the menu: Reporting > Business Intelligence > General Options | Notification Options

Description:

RowDescription
Enable job notification for administratorsEnables the default notification system. This option can be disabled for scheduled jobs.
E-mail fromE-mail sender
SMTP serverSMTP server address (IP/DNS)
SMTP portSMTP port
Use credentialUses an authentication (yes/no)
Use SSLUses an SSL authentification (yes/no)
SMTP userSMTP user account
SMTP passwordPassword for SMTP user (Set this parameter only if you need to update the password)
E-mail default titleDefault subject line for notification e-mail, if no other is specified
Default E-mail bodyDefault body of notification e-mail, if no other is specified
Default E-mail footerDefault footer of notification e-mail, if no other is specified
Centreon main server web protocolThe protocol used by Centreon web interface (http / https)
Centreon web URL extensionThe Centreon server URL extension (e.g.: /centreon)
Centreon main serverCentreon server address
Contact groupsCentreon MBI administrators contact groups. Leave empty if you do not want to receive a notification after each report is generated.
Testing notificationEnter an e-mail address into this field, then click on "test" to send an e-mail validating your configuration.

Scheduler options​

The following menu allows you to modify the scheduling options of the reporting engine:

Reporting > Business Intelligence > General Options | Scheduler options

CBIS properties​

The Centreon MBI interface can instantly communicate with the CBIS reporting engine. It opens a connection on the CBIS listening port to:

  • Alert about the modification or creation of a job.
  • Update the available languages for translation of the reports.
  • Test publication rule configurations.
  • Test the configuration of notifications.

Parameters description:

OptionDescription
CBIS hostIP address of server hosting the reporting engine
CBIS portTCP listening port for CBIS engine
CBIS connection timeoutTime limit (in seconds) for connection to the reporting engine

Any modification of these parameters requires restarting the CBIS daemon

systemctl restart cbis

Report generation scheduling properties​

Description of parameters:

OptionDescription
All cyclic reports generation hourHour for generating daily/weekly/monthly reports
Day of month for the generation of monthly reportsDay of month for generating monthly reports
Day of week for the generation of weekly reportsDay of week for generating weekly reports
Maximum load allowed to the scheduler for the jobs executionMaximum load authorized for running simultaneous jobs

Custom report properties​

Two reports require access to the Centreon main server to generate RRD graphs. These reports are:

  • Host-graph-v2
  • Hostgroup-graph-v2.

Fill in the following field specifying the server address:

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Any modification of these parameters requires restarting the CBIS daemon.

The default theme can also be defined in this menu, using the option "Default report color theme".

ETL options​

ETL stands for Extract Transform Load

The ETL integrated in Centreon is used to

  • Synchronize monitoring raw data with the reporting server
  • Calculate availability and performance statistics on the reporting server
  • Manage data retention on the reporting server.

It configured at installation and will probably not need any modification later.

Before proceding, you should have read the best practice parts to ensure that the objects (e.g., groups, categories) are configured according to Centreon MBI requirements.

In the Centreon menu Reporting > Business Intelligence > General Options > ETL options, specify the following options:

OptionsValues
General options
Reporting engine uses a dedicated dedicated MariaDB serverYes. You must use a reporting server
Compatibility mode to use report templates from version of Centreon MBI prior to 1.5.0No (deprecated)
Temporary file storage directory on reporting serverFolder where dumps will be stored on the reporting server
Type of statistics to build
  • Select “Availability only” if you only use availability reports.
  • Select “Performance and capacity only” if you only want to use capacity and performance reports.
  • Select “All” to calculate the statistics for both types of reports.
Use large memory tweaks (store MariaDB temporary tables in memory)Activated only if your MariaDB configuration and allocated physical memory on the server permit.
Reporting perimeter selection
HostgroupsSelect only host groups for which you want to aggregate data.
HostcategoriesSelect only host categories for which you want to aggregate data.
Service categoriesSelect only service categories for which you want to aggregate data.
Availability statistic calculation
Live services for availability statistics calculationSelect required time periods.
Performance and capacity statistic calculation
Granularity required for performance data statisticsSelect level of granularity required to run the desired performance reports (1).
Live services for performance data statistics calculationSelect required time periods.
Capacity statistic aggregated by month
Live services for capacity statistics calculationSelect the “24x7” time period.
Service categories related to capacity data monitoringSelect the service categories that have been associated with capacity-type services.
Exclude metrics from service categories that do not return capacity USAGE informationConcerns the metrics linked to services which return capacity data. Select the metrics that do not return capacity usage information. but a maximum or total value. (e.g., the metric “size”).
Centile parameters (2)
Calculating centile aggregation bySelect the desired aggregation level. The standard percentile report provided with BI 2.1 uses Month data.
Select service categories to aggregate centile onFilter on relevant service categories for centile statistics (e.g., Traffic).
First day of the weekSelect the first day of the week for Week aggregation.
Centile / Timeperiod combinationCreate a new centile/timeperiod combination on which to perform the calculation.

(1) Reports requiring a precise value per hour of performance data are listed below. If you do not use the following reports, disable the statistics calculation per hour:

  • Hostgroup-Host-details-1
  • Host-detail-v2
  • Hostgroup-traffic-Average-Usage-By-Interface
  • Hostgroup-traffic-by-Interface-And-Bandwith-Ranges.

(2) Centile statistics: To use the "Monthly Network Percentile" report you must activate centile calculation. Here is an example:

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Only service categories selected in "Reporting perimeter selection" will appear in the list of service categories available for centile statistics.

You can create as many centile-time period combinations as you like, but we strongly recommend not having more than 2 or 3 combination* on a small number of metrics contained in the category.

Data retention options​

The reporting server contains statistics tables specific to Centreon MBI in the database "centreon_storage". The storage space used by these tables increases every day. It is possible to control the size of these tables by setting data retention rules.

Under Reporting > Monitoring Business Intelligence > General options > Data retention, data retention can be managed by:

  • Type of data (availability, performance).
  • Precision of data (raw data, hourly, daily or monthly values).

Before enabling the data retention options, check that the Reporting engine uses a dedicated MariaDB server option is correctly set to "Yes" in the Reporting > Business Intelligence > General options ETL options menu.

Enable data retention management by selecting "Yes", then set the options in the configuration (example below).

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To activate automatic purge of old data, edit the cron file /etc/cron.d/centreon-bi-purge on the reporting server, then uncomment the following line:

#0 20 * * * root @CENTREON_BI_HOME@/*etl*/dataRetentionManager.pl >> @CENTREON_BI_LOG@/dataRetentionManager.log 2>&1

Avoid periods scheduled for statistical calculations with Centreon MBI ETL and report generations.

You can run this cron daily or weekly, depending on the execution time of the batch and the load generated on the server.

Then restart the service cron:

systemctl restart crond

BEST PRACTICE: Select different retention periods according to the granularity of the statistical data:

  • Hourly aggregated values are used to analyze a metric over a short period, they take a lot of space on the disk. You may not need to keep these statistics more that two or three months.
  • Beyond five or six months, you may only need to view the trend for availability or performance statistics. You could then keep the daily aggregated data for a maximum of six months, for example, and configure the retention of monthly aggregated data for a period of several dozen months.

Please go to the next chapter to continue the installation.

Report Parameter​

This tab enables you to display the dimensions available for a given user based on ACL restrictions and what was calculated in the data warehouse.

When updating the groups and categories configuration, make sure to update the ACL by clicking on "Update ACL resources". This will update available objects when configuring jobs.

Reporting Widgets​

This menu is used to verify the connection to the reporting database and edit the connection parameters, which are used to populate the widgets with data.