Sensor Collector

Overview

Sensor Collector is the data collection component for Provider Connectivity Assurance. It accepts data from Assurance Sensors and/or Telemetry Collectors and securely transmits the data to the Provider Connectivity Assurance platform, which can be deployed either in the customer environment or in the cloud.

Modes of Operation

A Sensor Collector can be configured to work in several different modes:

Gateway

• Sensor Agents and Telemetry Collectors securely connect to the Gateway Sensor Collector and stream performance monitoring data.
• Sensor Collector securely transmits the data to Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance.

CSV

• CSV Sensor Collector watches a directory for CSV files and, upon arrival, parses and uploads them.
• This is the method used for hardware Assurance Sensors.

Scraper (Supported but Not Recommended)

• Polls an external data source at a defined interval, transforms data, and uploads it to Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance.
• Can be used with any open source Openmetric exporter (e.g., snmp-exporter).
• The flexibility of Telegraf embedded in Telemetry Collector with the Gateway Sensor Collector has replaced this Scraper mode as the recommended mode for ingestion of telemetry, but Scraper mode remains supported.

SNMP Alert Forwarder

• In addition to its primary role as a data collection component, Sensor Collector can be configured to act in an "outbound" capacity for the platform as an SNMP threshold alert forwarder.
• Sensor Collector can be configured to listen for threshold alerts in Provider Connectivity Assurance, convert them to SNMP events/traps, and forward them to a given destination.
• Learn More: How to Provision Sensor Collector to Support SNMP

System Requirements

Summary of the compute requirements for Sensor Collector:

• Sensor Collector System Requirements

Configuration

Configuration instructions are provided in this article:

• Configure Sensor Collector

Deployment

Installation guides are available for both Docker and Kubernetes environments:

• Deploying Sensor Collector in Docker
• Deploying Sensor Collector in Kubernetes

Inventory of Sensor Collectors

All configured Sensor Collectors are displayed in the Provider Connectivity Assurance user interface, from which they can be downloaded for initial deployment and/or upgrades.

• Sensor Collector Inventory