Configuration avancée

Centreon Broker et pare-feu

Certaines fois, il n'est pas possible d'initialiser le flux Centreon Broker depuis le collecteur (ou Remote Server) vers le serveur Centreon Central ou le Remote Server.

Centreon a développé la possibilité d'initialiser le flux depuis le serveur Centreon Central vers le collecteur ou du Remote Server vers le collecteur.

Rendez-vous dans le menu Configuration > Pollers > Broker configuration et cliquez sur la configuration Centreon Broker SQL du serveur Centreon Central ou du Remote Server.

Rendez-vous dans l'onglet Input et ajouter une nouvelle entrée de type TCP - IPv4.

Saisissez le nom de cette configuration, le port TCP pour le champ Connection port afin de se connecter au collecteur et l'adresse IP du collecteur pour le champ Host to connect to, puis cliquez sur Save :

Rendez-vous dans le menu Configuration > Pollers > Broker configuration et cliquez sur la configuration Broker module de votre collecteur.

Rendez-vous dans l'onglet Output et modifiez l'entrée Output 1 -IPv4 :

1. Supprimer la valeur pour le champ Host to connect to
2. Contrôlez le port TCP Connection port
3. Activer l'option One peer retention

Cliquez sur Save, générer et exporter la configuration des serveurs impactés.

Authentification avec Centreon Broker

Si vous souhaitez authentifier les pollers envoyant des données dans votre système de monitoring vous pouvez utiliser le mécanisme d’authentification intégré à Centreon Broker. Celui-ci est basé sur l’utilisation de certificats X.509.

La première étape est de générer un certificat pour l’autorité de certification (Certificate Authority, CA) avec OpenSSL. ca.key sera la clé privée (à stocker de manière sécurisée), tandis que ca.crt sera la clé publique servant à authentifier les connexions entrantes :

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout ca.key -out ca.crt -days 365

Nous pouvons maintenant générer les certificats en utilisant la clé de la CA :

openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout central.key -out central.csr -days 365
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout poller.key -out poller.csr -days 365
openssl x509 -req -in central.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out central.crt -days 365 -sha256
openssl x509 -req -in poller.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out poller.crt -days 365 -sha256

Placez central.key, central.crt et ca.crt sur le serveur Centreon central (dans /etc/centreon-broker par exemple) et poller.key, poller.crt et ca.crt sur votre poller.

Nous devons maintenant configurer Centreon Broker pour utiliser ces fichiers. Allez dans Configuration > Pollers > Broker configuration. Pour central-broker-master, dans l'onglet Input, vous devez remplir les paramètres suivants pour central-broker-master-input.

• Enable TLS encryption = Yes
• Private key file = /etc/centreon-broker/central.key
• Public certificate = /etc/centreon-broker/central.crt
• Trusted CA's certificate = /etc/centreon-broker/ca.crt

De manière similaire pour le poller, vous devez modifier les paramètres de la connexion TCP dans l'onglet Output.

• Enable TLS encryption = Yes
• Private key file = /etc/centreon-broker/poller.key
• Public certificate = /etc/centreon-broker/poller.crt
• Trusted CA's certificate = /etc/centreon-broker/ca.crt

Régénérez la configuration des pollers affectés par ces changements (Configuration > Pollers > Pollers) et la mise en place de l'authentification est terminée.

Centreontrapd Configuration

Collecteur

Il est nécessaire de modifier la configuration du processus Centreontrapd afin d'utiliser la base de données locale SQLite. Référez-vous au chapitre Supervision Passive..

Remote Server

La configuration du processus Centreontrapd est identique à celle d'un serveur Centreon Central.

Pour aller plus loin avec Centreon Broker

Cette section est uniquement disponible en langue anglaise.

This section aims to help user understand how Centreon Broker works and how it should be configured. It references Centreon's best practices and describe the various options used by Centreon Broker.

General Overview

Centreon Broker is at is core a simple multiplexing engine. It takes events from Inputs and send them to various Outputs. Inputs are typically other instances of Centreon Broker over TCP/IP, while Outputs can be a SQL database, other brokers, a BI/BAM engine, Centreon Map, etc.

Each Input or Output has a type that describe what it does and several parameters, some of them mandatory and other optional. Additionally, an Output can have a Failover that will start when the Output is in an error state to allow retention of data.

An important distinction to make is the standalone Centreon Broker versus a Centreon Broker installed as Centreon Engine's module. Both have the exact same capabilities and support the same Inputs and Outputs. The difference is that Centreon Broker configured as a module will be automatically started when Centreon Engine starts and automatically generates the events associated to this Centreon Engine. Often, those modules only have one Output to an instance of Centreon Broker acting as a concentrator.

Main Configuration Page

This section lists all the instances of Centreon Broker configured in your park, either in standalone or module mode. Each instance has a name, is associated with a poller, has a number of Inputs, Outputs, and Loggers, and can be 'enabled' or 'disabled'.

A poller of type 'Central' will have three instances of Centreon Broker by default. One Centreon Broker installed as a module for Centreon Engine (here called central-module-master), one Centreon Broker acting as a stand-alone concentrator (here called central-broker-master) and one Centreon Broker specialized in generating the RRD data used by the graphs (here called central-rrd-master). A best practice is to always use a separate instance of Centreon Broker to generate RRD data. This way, an issue in the RRD stack will not cause any issue in your main monitoring.

As expected, central-module-master has only one Output and zero Input. Configured as a module to Centreon Engine, it generates events on its own and forward them to the standalone instance of Centreon Broker.

A poller generally only have an instance of Centreon Broker, configured as a module for Centreon Engine.

Broker General Configuration Page

This section lists all the general options associated with an instance of Centreon Broker.

Main options:

• Poller
  The poller where this instance lives.

• Name
  The name of this instance.

• Config file name
  The name of the configuration file used by this instance.

• Retention path
  When an Output is in an error state, a Failover is launched. Failovers save data in files called retention files. Those in turn are saved in the directory specified here. Best practice is /var/lib/centreon-broker/ For security reasons, you can use these directories:

  • /var/lib/centreon-broker/
  • /var/lib/centreon-engine/
  • /var/cache/centreon/

• Status
  This is used to enable or disable this instance.

Log options:

• Log directory Path where the log file will be created.

• Log filename Name of the log file. Default is <name of this broker configuration entry>.log

• Maximum files size (in bytes) A value different from zero will cause the creation of a new numbered log file as soon as the maximum size is reached. Recommended value is 0.

• core Log level for core log messages, the main logs of centreon-broker.

• config Log level for config log messages. Useful to troubleshoot configuration handling issues.

• sql Log level for sql log messages. Useful to troubleshoot database queries issues.

• processing Log level for processing log messages. You shouldn't change it unless you know what you are looking for.

• perfdata Log level for perfdata log messages. Useful to troubleshoot performance data processing issues.

• bbdo Log level for bbdo log messages. Useful to troubleshoot broker binary data objects issues.

• tcp Log level for tcp log messages. Useful to troubleshoot network related issues.

• tls Log level for tls log messages. Useful to troubleshoot TLS encryption issues.

• lua Log level for lua log messages. Useful to troubleshoot Lua Stream Connectors issues.

• bam Log level for bam log messages. Useful to troubleshoot Business Activity Monitoring issues.

• Write timestamp (applies to the deprecated loggger options) If activated, each log entry is preceded by the timestamp of the time it was written. This is useful to know when an error has occured. Best practice is Yes.

• Write thread id
  If activated, each log entry is preceded by the ID of the thread being executed at that instant. This is only used for advanced debugging purposes. Best practice is No.

Advanced Options:

• Statistics
  Centreon Broker has an on-demand status reporting mechanism that can be enabled here. This is used by Centreon Web to check the status of the instance at any time and determine which inputs and outputs are in an error state and to generate various statistics on event processing. Best practice is Yes.

• Correlation
  Centreon Broker has a top-level correlation mechanism. This should only be activated if top-level correlation has been properly configured in Centreon Web. In all other cases, default is No.

• Event queue max size
  The maximum size of the in-memory queue in events. If the number of events in memory exceeds this number, Centreon Broker will start to use temporary files to prevent the broker from using too much memory. This, however, causes additional disk I/O. The exact number can be adjusted to use more or less memory. A suggested default is 50000.

If Statistics is enabled, on-demand status can be queried manually through a file in /var/lib/centreon-broker/name.stats.

Broker input configuration page

This section lists all the inputs activated for this instance of Centreon Broker. Centreon Broker can have as many inputs as needed.

Inputs read events from a TCP connection. All inputs have the following parameters:

• Name
  The name of the input. Must be unique.

• Serialization protocol
  The protocol that was used to serialize the data. Can be either 'BBDO' or 'NDO'. NDO is an old textual protocol that suffers from very poor performance, poor density of data, and poor security. BBDO is a next-gen binary protocol that is performant and secure. NDO is deprecated. It should never be used in new installation. Best practice is 'BBDO'.

• Compression
  If compression was used to serialize the data. Can be 'auto', 'yes', or 'no'. If left on 'auto' Centreon Broker will detect if compression was used while doing a TCP handshake (or assume no compression was used for files). Default to 'auto' for TCP, 'no' for files.

• Filter category
  The categories of events accepted by this Input. If empty, no restriction on events accepted. If filled, only events of the given type will be processed. Input that accept data from Centreon Engines' Broker module should be set to accept only 'Neb' events.

• Connection Port
  Which port will be used for the connection. Mandatory.

• Host to connect to
  This important parameter will decide if this input will listen or attempt to initiate a connection. Left empty, this input will listen on its given port. If filled, this input will attempt to initiate a connection to the given host/port.

• Enable TLS encryption
  Enable the encryption of the flux. For the encryption to work, the private key file, the public certificate and the trusted CA's certificate need to be set on both end. Default to 'auto', i.e 'no' unless TCP negociation has been activated and the remote endpoint has activated encryption.

• Private Key File
  The private key file used for the encryption.

• Public certificate
  The public certificate used for the encryption.

• Trusted CA's certificate
  The trused CA certificate used for the encryption.

• Enable negociation
  Enable negociation. If 'yes', this Intput will try to negociate encryption and compression with the remote endpoint.

• One peer retention mode
  By default, a listening input will accept any number of incoming connections. In 'one peer retention' mode only one connection is accepted at the same time, on a first-come first-serve basis. Default to 'no'.

To reiterate, TCP Input can either listen on a given port or can attempt to initiate a connection if a host is given. This allow flexible network topology.

Broker Output Configuration Page

This section lists all the Outputs activated for this instance of Centreon Broker. Centreon Broker can have as many Outputs as needed.

For each Outputs, the parameters are:

• Type There are several types of outputs managed by the Centreon Broker:

  1. TCP - IPV4 and TCP - IPV6: This output forwards data to another server, another Centreon Broker or Centreon Map.
  2. File: Writes data into a file.
  3. RRD: Generates RRD data from performance data.
  4. Storage: Writes metrics into the database and generates performance data (deprecated).
  5. SQL: Writes the real-time status into Centreon's database (deprecated).
  6. unified-sql: Writes the real-time status into Centreon's database. One such output replaces Storage and SQL outputs in the same time.
  7. Dumper Reader: Reads from a database when Broker is asked to synchronize databases.
  8. Dumper Writer: Writes into a database when Broker is asked to synchronize databases.
  9. BAM Monitoring: Generates BAM data from raw events and updates real-time BAM status.
  10. BAM Reporting: Writes long-term BAM logs that can then be used by BI.
  11. Generic - Stream connector: This is a generic output. You need to write a Lua script to explain what you want.

• Failover A failover is an output that will be started when in an error state. Examples are TCP connections "gone haywire" or a MySQL server suddenly disconnecting, etc. By default, each output has an automatic failover that will always store data in retention files and replay it when the primary output recovers from its error state. This is desirable 99% of the time. Alternatively, you can specify another output that will act as a failover if needed.

• Retry interval When the output is in an error state, this parameter controls the amount of time the output will wait before retrying. Default is one attempt every 30 seconds.

• Buffering timeout
  When this output is in an error state, Centreon Broker will wait a specified time before launching the failover. This is mainly useful if Centreon Broker should wait for another software to initialize before activating its failover. In all other cases, this parameter should not be used. Default is 0 seconds.

• Filter category The categories of events accepted by this output. If left empty, no restriction on events accepted. If filled, only events of the given type will be processed. The exact best practices are output specific:

  1. BAM Reporting should only accept BAM events.
  2. Dump Writer should only accept dumper events.
  3. RRD should only accept storage events.

  In all other cases, no restriction should be configured.

Events generated by an output are reinjected into Centreon Broker's event queue.

Some outputs only work when consuming data generated by another output. An RRD output consumes data from a storage output, a dumper writer output consumes data from a dumper reader, and a BAM reporting output consumes data from a BAM monitoring output.

Centreon Web needs at least an active output SQL ouput to activate its real-time monitoring capabilities. The storage and RRD outputs are needed to activate Centreon Web metric plotting. The BAM monitoring output is needed for real-time BAM data and the BAM reporting output for BI reports.

Due to the fully distributed nature of Centreon Broker, producer and consumer outputs can be located on logically or physically different instances as long as they are connected to each other.

Important: Centreon Web 2.x features two databases, the configuration database and the real-time database. Those are respectively called centreon and centreon-storage. Different outputs expect may different databases in their configuration.

Output Type	Expected database
SQL	centreon-storage
Storage	centreon-storage
Unified SQL	centreon-storage
Dumper Reader	centreon
Dumper Writer	centreon
BAM Monitoring	centreon
BAM Reporting	centreon-storage

TCP outputs

TCP outputs forward events to a remote endpoint. As with TCP inputs, TCP outputs can either listen on a given port or attempt to initiate a connection if a host parameter is given. This allows for flexible network topology.

TCP-type outputs have the following parameters:

• Serialization protocol
  The protocol used to serialize the data. Can be either BBDO or NDO. NDO is an legacy textual protocol with inferior performance, data density and security. BBDO is a next-generation binary protocol that is effective and secure. NDO is deprecated. It should never be used for new installations. Best practice is BBDO.

• Enable negotiation
  If yes, this output will try to negotiate encryption and compression with the remote endpoint.

• Connection Port
  Port used for the connection. Mandatory.

• Host to connect to
  This key parameter decides whether the input will listen or attempt to initiate a connection. If left empty, the input will listen on its given port. If specified, it will attempt to initiate a connection to the given host/port.

• Enable TLS encryption
  Enables the encryption of the flow. For the encryption to work, the private key file, Public certificate and Trusted CA's certificate need to be set on both ends. Default is auto, i.e., no unless TCP negotiation has been activated and the remote endpoint has activated encryption.

• Private Key File
  The private key file used for the encryption.

• Public certificate
  The public certificate used for the encryption.

• Trusted CA's certificate
  The trusted CA certificate used for the encryption.

• One peer retention mode
  By default, a listening input will accept any number of incoming connections. In one peer retention mode only one connection at a time is accepted, on a first-come first-serve basis. Default is no.

• Compression
  If compression should be used to serialize the data. Can be auto, yes, or no. If left on auto Centreon Broker will detect if compression is supported by the endpoint during a TCP negotiation. Default is auto for TCP.

• Compression Level
  The level of compression that should be used, from 1 to 9. Default (or if not filled) is 6. The higher the compression level is, the higher the compression will be at the expense of processing power.

• Compression Buffer
  The size of the compression buffer that should be used. Best practice is 0 or nothing.

File outputs

File outputs send events into a file on the disk. Additionally, they have the capability of replaying the data of this file if used as a failover output. Most file outputs will be used as failovers.

File type outputs have the following parameters:

• Serialization protocol
  The protocol that was used to serialize the data. Can be either BBDO or NDO. NDO is a legacy textual protocol with inferior performance, data density and security. BBDO is a next-generation binary protocol that is effective and secure. NDO is deprecated. It should never be used for new installations. Best practice is BBDO.

• File path
  The path of the file being written to.

• Compression
  If compression should be used to serialize the data. Can be auto, yes, or no. auto is equal to no for files.

• Compression Level
  The level of compression to be used, from 1 to 9. Default (or if not filled) is 6. The higher the compression level is, the higher the compression will be at the expense of processing power.

• Compression Buffer
  The size of the compression buffer to be used. Best practice is 0.

RRD outputs

RRD outputs generate RRD data (used by Centreon Web to generate graphs) from metrics data generated by a storage output. The best practice is to isolate this output on its own Centreon Broker instance to ensure that an issue in the RRD stack will not have any impact on the main Centreon Broker instance.

RRD-type outputs have the following parameters:

• RRD file directory for metrics
  The directory where the RRD files of the metrics will be written. A recommended default is /var/lib/centreon/metrics/.

• RRD file directory for status
  The directory where the RRD files of the status will be written. A recommended default is /var/lib/centreon/status/

• TCP port
  The port used by RRDCached, if RRDCached has been configured on this server. If not, leave empty.

• Unix socket
  The Unix socket used by RRDCached, if RRDCached has been configured on this server. If not, leave empty.

• Write metrics
  Should RRD metric files be written? Default is yes.

• Write status
  Should RRD status files be written? Default is yes.

Storage Outputs

Perfdata storage outputs save metric data into a database and generate RRD data used by the RRD output. This output usually generates multiple queries and is very performance intensive. If Centreon Broker is slow, try adjusting the maximum queries per transaction parameter to optimize processing speed.

This output can be tasked to rebuild RRD data from a database of stored metric data. This is usually a slow, costly process, though you can simultaneously process new metric data at a reduced speed.

Storage-type outputs have the following parameters:

• DB Type
  The type of the database being accessed. MariaDB is a state-of-the-art database that has been extensively tested by Centreon. We advise using MariaDB.

• DB Port
  The port of the database being accessed.

• DB User
  The user account for connecting to this database.

• DB Name
  The name of the database. In Centreon terms, this is the database containing the real-time monitoring data, generally called centreon-storage.

• DB Password
  The password used by the output to connect to this database.

• Maximum queries per transaction
  This parameter is used to batch several queries in large transactions. This allows for improved performance but can generate latency if an insufficient number of queries are generated to fill those batches. The default is 20000 queries per transaction. If you have a low load and unexpectedly high latency, try lowering this number. If you have a high load and high latency, try raising it.

• Transaction commit timeout
  Number of seconds allowed before a forced commit is made. Default is infinite. If you have a low load and unexpectedly high latency, try 5 seconds.

• Replication enabled
  Should Centreon Broker check that the replication status of this database is complete before trying to insert data? Only useful if replication is enabled for this database.

• Rebuild check interval in seconds
  The number of seconds between each rebuild check. Default 300 seconds.

• Store in performance data in data_bin
  Should this output save the metric data in the database? Default is yes. If no, this output will generate RRD data without saving them into the database, making a rebuild impossible.

• Insert in index data
  Should new index data be inserted into the database? Default is no. This should never be modified unless prompted by Centreon Support or explicitly advised in the documentation.

SQL outputs

SQL outputs save real-time status data into the real-time database used by Centreon Web. This is the most important output for the operation of Centreon Web.

Moreover, this output has a garbage collector that will clean old data from the database occasionally. This is an optional process, as old data is marked disabled, and can actually be useful to keep for debugging purpose.

SQL-type outputs have the following parameters:

• DB Type
  The type of the database being accessed. MariaDB is a state-of-the-art database that has been extensively tested by Centreon. We advise using MariaDB.

• DB Port
  The port of the database being accessed.

• DB User
  The user account for connecting to this database.

• DB Name
  The name of the database. In Centreon terms, this is the database containing the real-time monitoring data, generally called centreon-storage.

• DB Password
  The password used by the output to connect to this database.

• Maximum queries per transaction
  This parameter is used to batch several queries in large transactions. This allows for improved performance but can generate latency if an insufficient number of queries are generated to fill those batches. The default is 20000 queries per transaction. If you have a low load and unexpectedly high latency, try lowering this number. If you have a high load and high latency, try raising this number.

• Transaction commit timeout
  Number of seconds allowed before a forced commit is made. Default is infinite. If you have a low load and unexpectedly high latency, try 5 seconds.

• Replication enabled
  Should Centreon Broker check that the replication status of this database is complete before trying to insert data? Only useful if replication is enabled for this database.

• Cleanup check interval
  Number of seconds between each run of the garbage collector "cleaning" out old data in the database. Default is never.

• Instance timeout
  Number of seconds before an instance is marked as unresponding and all of its hosts and services marked as unknown. Default is 300 seconds.

Unified SQL outputs

Unified SQL outputs are the union of Storage outputs and SQL outputs. They save metric data into a database and generate RRD data used by the RRD output.

This output usually generates multiple queries and is very performance intensive. If Centreon Broker is slow, try adjusting the maximum queries per transaction parameter to optimize processing speed.

This output can be tasked to rebuild RRD data from a database of stored metric data. This is usually a slow, costly process, though you can simultaneously process new metric data at a reduced speed.

Unified SQL outputs also save real-time status data into the real-time database used by Centreon Web. This is the most important output for the operation of Centreon Web.

Moreover, this output has a garbage collector that will clean old data from the database occasionally. This is an optional process, as old data is marked disabled, and can actually be useful to keep for debugging purposes.

Since bbdo 3, this output is the preferred one instead of the storage and sql outputs. That way, you just need one output to the database, configurations have to be filled once and there are less conflicts between outputs.

unified-sql-type outputs have the following parameters:

• DB Type The type of the database being accessed. MariaDB is a state-of-the-art database that has been extensively tested by Centreon. We advise using MariaDB.

• DB Port The port of the database being accessed.

• DB User The user account for connecting to this database.

• DB Name The name of the database. In Centreon terms, this is the database containing the real-time monitoring data, generally called centreon-storage.

• DB Password The password used by the output to connect to this database.

• Maximum queries per transaction This parameter is used to batch several queries in large transactions. This allows for improved performance but can generate latency if an insufficient number of queries are generated to fill those batches. The default is 20000 queries per transaction. If you have a low load and unexpectedly high latency, try lowering this number. If you have a high load and high latency, try raising it.

• Transaction commit timeout Number of seconds allowed before a forced commit is made. Default is infinite. If you have a low load and unexpectedly high latency, try 5 seconds.

• Replication enabled Should Centreon Broker check that the replication status of this database is complete before trying to insert data? Only useful if replication is enabled for this database.

• Rebuild check interval in seconds The number of seconds between each rebuild check. Default 300 seconds.

• Store performance data in data_bin Should this output save the metric data in the database? Default is yes. If no, this output will generate RRD data without saving them into the database, making a rebuild impossible.

• Insert in index data Should new index data be inserted into the database? Default is no. This should never be modified unless prompted by Centreon Support or explicitly advised in the documentation.

• Cleanup check interval Number of seconds between each run of the garbage collector "cleaning" out old data in the database. Default is never.

• Instance timeout Number of seconds before an instance is marked as unresponding and all of its hosts and services marked as unknown. Default is 300 seconds.

• Connections count Number of connections to the database maintained by this output. This allows broker to write data in parallel using up to 3 connections:

  • 1: all the database traffic goes through only one connection. It is fine for small platforms.
  • 2: one connection is dedicated to the traffic (BULK INSERT statements) towards the data_bin and logs tables and the second one handles the rest.
  • 3: two connections are dedicated to the traffic (BULK INSERT statements) towards the data_bin and logs tables and the third one handles the rest. We recommend this setting for large platforms.

Lua outputs

Lua outputs send metrics information into a script by a key-value system. The Lua script should reside on your server.

• Path The path of the Lua script in your server.

• Filter category The categories of events accepted by this output. If empty, no restriction on events is accepted. If specified, only events of the given type will be processed. Outputs that accept data from Centreon Engine's Broker module should be set to only accept Neb events.

Lua parameter

• Type Type of metric value.

• Name/Key Name of metric value.

• Value Value of metric.

Dumper reader/writer

A Dumper Reader/Writer pair is used to synchronize part of a database between two instances of Centreon Broker. In the future there will be an extensive synchronization mechanism, but today it is mainly used to synchronize BA for the BAM Poller Display mechanism.

The BAM Poller Display configuration documentation explains how to properly configure those Outputs.

Outputs of type 'Dumper Reader' and 'Dumper Writer' have the following parameters:

• DB Type
  The type of the database being accessed. MariaDB is a state-of-the-art database that has been extensively tested with Centreon. We advice the use of MariaDB.

• DB Port
  The port of the database being accessed.

• DB User
  The user used by this Output to connect to this database.

• DB Name
  The name of this database. In Centreon term, this is the database containing the configuration data, generally called 'centreon'.

• DB Password
  The password used by this Output to connect to this database.