Configure the Edge Delta Free Edition Agent

Overview

The Free Edition Agent has a default configuration that caters for many use cases. However, you can use Visual Pipelines to view your data pipeline and also make some changes to the configuration.

Concepts

The agent configuration structure is a graph consisting of three types of nodes and the links between them:

• Input Nodes
• Processor Nodes
• Output Nodes

Free edition users can add the following nodes:

• Base64 Decoder
• GZIP Decompressor
• Log to Metric
• Mask filter
• Regex filter

Enterprise plan users are able to make more changes to their agent configurations using Visual Pipelines or by configuring the agent YAML file with a text editor.

The data handled by nodes and transported by links is known as a Data Item. It is a JSON object with the following format:

{
  "timestamp": "1581452773000000789",
  "severity_text": "Error",
  "body": "{\"user\": \"userA\",\"operation\": \"delete\",\"outcome\": \"failed\"}",
  "resource": {
    "host.name": "host-1",
    "ed.tag": "test-config",
    "ed.org.id": "0481a213-....",
    "config_id": "12345678-abcd-...",
    "__src_name": "source_name",
    "src_type": "K8s",
    "__logical_source": "logical_source",
    "__short_src_name": "short_source_name",
    "__group_name": "group_name",
    "k8s.namespace.name": "edgedelta",
    "k8s.pod.name": "api-deployment-d79fab72249c",
    "container.name": "echo:latest",
    "k8s.controller.kind": "Deployment",
    "k8s.controller.logical.name": "api-deployment",
    "k8s.labels": {
      "app":"my-api"
      }
  },
  "_type": "log",
  "attributes": {
    "pod_id":"api-deployment-d79fab72249c-vtq9x", 
    "instance_id":"i-1234567890abcdef0",  
    "instance_name":"test-name",  
    "_parsed": {
      "user": "userA",
      "operation": "delete",
      "outcome": "failed",
    },
  },  
}  

View Agent Configuration

You can view the default agent configuration in Visual Pipelines:

1. In the Edge Delta App, click Admin, and then click Clusters.

2. Click the three dot menu in the actions column and select View Pipeline.

Visual Pipelines opens.

Configure the Agent

See a demonstration of Visual Pipelines on a paid tier.

Creating a Node

To create a node:

1. Open Visual Pipelines.
2. Click Edit Mode.

3. Click either Add Input or Add Processor and select the type of node, for example Add Processor - Transformation - Mask Processor.

4. The node appears in the appropriate pane and the configuration pane opens.
5. Enter the configuration details and click Okay.

Alternatively, you can add a processor node directly onto an existing link - hover over the link, click the Add (+) icon, and select the node type. This creates the new processor node in the position where the add icon was, and also connects it to the upstream and downstream nodes on the link.

To delete a node, select it and hover over the area above it, then select the Bin icon.

Connecting Nodes

To connect nodes, click either the input or the output interface of the node and drag it to the input or output of another node. Some nodes differentiate between default and failure outputs so you can send different results of the node to different destinations.

Links between incompatible nodes can’t be configured - indicated by a red interface. As you release the link, the nodes will rearrange themselves to optimize readability of the data pipeline.

To delete a link: Select the link and click the Bin icon.

After installing the agent, you can Set Up Alerts.

Free Edition Nodes