Installation

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This section covers the steps for installing Skylar Automated RCA On Prem.

Assumptions

  1. All pre-installation steps have been completed.
  2. Your Kubernetes cluster we will deploy to is sized to at least the minimum specification provided in our sizing guideline chart on the sizing guide page for the log volume you plan to test. Click Show Advanced Info at the bottom of the sizing guideline chart for more details.
  3. The cluster we will deploy to is running at minimum Kubernetes version 1.19.
  4. Helm 3 can be configured and used with the cluster.
  5. The cluster we will deploy to has local storage available (NFS is not supported).
  6. A Fully Qualified Host Name is available for ingress with a SSL certificate (we only support https to our application UI)
  7. Images can be pulled from https://harbor.ops.zebrium.com/, or other arrangements can be made to make the images available during install.
  8. Any prerequisites for your preferred ingress controller have been gathered.
  9. Any additional configurations have been made.

Installation Steps

Complete the following steps to install Skylar Automated RCA On Prem.

STEP 1: Installing the Helm Chart

  1. Create a secret using the Harbor repository that was setup for you by Skylar Automated RCA. Skylar Automated RCA will provide you with your Harbor USERNAME and PASSWORD.

    kubectl create secret docker-registry regcred --docker-server=harbor.ops.zebrium.com --docker-username=<USERNAME> --docker-password=<PASSWORD> --docker-email=<EMAIL> --namespace <NAMESPACE>

  2. Update your Helm chart override.yaml file with the secret from Step 1.

    global.imagePullSecret.Name="<SECRET>"

  3. Add the Harbor repository to your Kubernetes cluster:

    helm repo add --username <USERNAME> --password <PASSWORD> <REPO_NAME> https://harbor.ops.zebrium.com/chartrepo/onprem

    helm repo update

  4. Install the Skylar Automated RCA On Prem Software:

    helm upgrade <RELEASE_NAME> -i --namespace <NAMESPACE> <REPO_NAME>/zebrium-onprem -f <override.yaml>

STEP 2: Configuring Your Account

Skylar Automated RCA On Prem currently supports a single account where all data will be ingested. This account can have multiple users and logins.

Create your account and the first user:

You should only do this once.

  1. In a browser, use the following format to type the URL for creating the account and first user:

    https://<Your_Skylar_URL>/auth/sign-up?firstName=<first_name>&lastName=<last_name>&companyName=<company_name>&email=<user_email>

    For example:

    https://cloud.ze.com/auth/sign-up?firstName=Jane&lastName=Doe&companyName=Acme&email=JDoe@acme.com

  2. Complete the remaining fields on the form and click the right arrow to continue.

  3. Invite other users to your account by going to the User Management tab from the Settings menu.

  4. Click Add User and complete the form.

  5. The next time you log in to your account, the Skylar Automated RCA user interface will enable the Deployments feature.

STEP 3: Ingesting Data into your Skylar Automated RCA On Prem Instance

After you have your Skylar Automated RCA instance fully initialized, you can configure collectors to send data into your Skylar Automated RCA instance. Navigate to the Integrations & Collectors page from the Settings menu () and select the collector you would like to set up from the list. For more information on how to configure each collector, see Configuring Log Collectors and File Uploads.

Obtaining your ZAPI Token and Endpoint

Instructions and commands for sending data to your On Prem instance is available under Log Collector in the settings menu.

Failure Domain Boundary

Because Skylar Automated RCA On Prem currently supports a single account with only one deployment, if you intend to ingest data from unrelated services/applications it is important to specify the ze_deployment_name label which essentially defines a failure domain boundary for anomaly correlation.

You will see in the examples provided below, how to specify the ze_deployment_name label for each of the three methods that can be used to ingest data.

The ze_deployment_name must be a single word lowercase characters.

Using the Command-line Interface to Ingest Data

For instructions about downloading, configuring, and using the Skylar Automated RCA command-line interface, see File Upload (ze Command).

Here is an example that ingests a Jira log file into the atlassian failure domain (ze_deployment_name):

~/zapi/bin/ze up --file=jira.log --log=jira --ids=zid_host=jiraserver,ze_deployment_name=atlassian --auth=97453627rDGSDE67FDCA77BCE44 --url=http://34.72.193.228:443

Using the Kubernetes Log Collector to Ingest Data

If your application to be "monitored" is Kubernetes-based, this is the preferred method for sending logs to Skylar Automated RCA On Prem.

The log collector is deployed as a Kubernetes Helm chart as follows:

  1. kubectl create namespace zebrium
  2. helm install zlog-collector zlog-collector --namespace zebrium --repo https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zebrium/ze-kubernetes-collector/master/charts --set zebrium.collectorUrl=http://<ZAPI_ENDPOINT>:443,zebrium.authToken=<ZAPI_TOKEN>,zebrium.deployment=<ZE_DEPLOYMENT_NAME>,zebrium.timezone=<KUBERNETES_HOST_TIMEZONE>

Remember to substitute <ZAPI_ENDPOINT>, <ZAPI_TOKEN>, <ZE_DEPLOYMENT_NAME> and <KUBERNETES_HOST_TIMEZONE> with the relevant values for your system.

Using Logstash to Ingest Data

For instructions about configuring this integration, see Logstash Collector.

Please contact ScienceLogic Support for assistance with configuration.