Skylight sensor agents 23.04 Release Notes

Overview

Accedian is pleased to announce release 23.04 of Skylight sensor: agents.

Note

Starting with release 22.11 the container image names have been shortened to the format agent-AGENTTYPE-PLATFORM:RELEASE, example:
agent-throughput-amd64:r23.04

See section "Agent Installation" for current docker pull strings

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What's New

Release 23.04 of the Skylight sensor: agent contains a number of new features and functions compared to the previous 22.11 and 22.07 releases:

• New UI component in Analytics to manage actuate and throughput agents - trace and transfer will be added in the next release
• Improved parameter support for agent transfer - full proxy server support
• Agent actuate now scaled to support 500 simultaneous sessions
• Support for generic configuration objects for agent SDK
• Enhanced support for running agents on Cisco Third-Party-Application space
• Logs for troubleshooting now available to download via UI or API from agents via "Generated report file"

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Release Components

Component	Version	Note
agent throughput X86_64 / AMD64	23.04_1668
agent actuate X86_64 / AMD64	23.04_1668
agent trace X86_64 / AMD64	23.04_1668
agent transfer X86_64 / AMD64	23.04_145
agent sdk X86_64 / AMD64	23.04_1668
agent throughput ARM64	23.04_1668
agent actuate ARM64	23.04_1668
agent trace ARM64	23.04_1668
agent transfer ARM64	23.04_145
agent sdk ARM64 / AMD64	23.04_1668
orchestration	0.125.0	component of Skylight analytics 23.04
roadrunner	0.456.11 or later

Agent Characteristics and Capabilities

agent	capability	max use count	vCPU* max	RAM max	Disk typical	comment
actuate	RFC5357 TWAMP light	500	0.05 - 1 core	0.2-0.5GB	0.2GB	5000 pps per agent
actuate	RFC5357 TWAMP control	500	0.05 - 1 core	0.2-0.5GB	0.2GB	5000 pps per agent
actuate	RFC862 UDP Echo	500	0.15 core	0.3GB	0.2GB	5000 pps per agent
actuate	RFC792 ICMP Echo	500	0.15 core	0.3GB	0.2GB	5000 pps per agent
throughput	RFC6349 baseline	1	1 core	0.1GB	0.2GB	1Gbps max
throughput	RFC6349 throughput	1	1 core	0.1GB	0.2GB	10Gbps max
trace	UDP/TCP/ICMP Paris	100 (sequentially executed)	0.1 core	0.1GB	0.2GB
transfer	TCP L7 https/ftp/tcp	250 (sequentially executed)	0.1 core	0.1GB	0.2GB
roadrunner data proxy	-	-	4 cores	8GB	10GB	2,500 concurrent sessions

A vCPU is considered as a thread on standard x86 CPU, running typically at 2.2 to 2.4GHz.

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Notes:
Max use count refers to the number of sessions per agent instance, multiple agents can be deployed on the same host to increase session count.
CPU usage for actuate is shown as a range depending on load. Highest load is 5000 pps (for example 500 sessions of 10 pps each).
Paris, in the Capability column, represents the current algorithm for trace route.

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Upgrade Paths

Skylight sensor: agents use a destroy-redeploy model common for container applications. This means that an agent is never upgraded, it is simply replaced. In order to support this mode of operation, only the absolute minimum of configuration parameters are stored with the agent, the rest being kept in the orchestration system and downloaded to the agent at startup. The agent 23.04 is backwards compatible with the docker-compose configuration of 22.11, 22.07, 22.04 and 21.12, which means the agent can be updated by changing the release version and name in the docker compose file. Note that the release name for docker pull was shortened in release 22.11.

Agent session configuration in the orchestration is backwards compatible with 22.11, so no session or test configuration changes are required when upgrading agents or Analytics to 23.04.

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Deployment Considerations

The sensor: agents deploy as containers on x86_64 and arm64 environments. Thus, a container environment is required and we recommend docker 20.10.0 or later.

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Corrected Issues

ID	description	details
SA-420	Agent management	Management over IPv6 caused issues on some linux platforms in AWS. Fixed in 23.04
SA-1172	Packet IO on some Cisco router models not working (TPA space). Fixed in 23.04

Known Issues

ID	description	workaround
SA-306	Payload size for IPv6 TWAMP can be set to larger values than the MTU	Do not use larger IPv6 payload size than 1452b
SA-509	TWAMP-CP: When control session is down, data is not accepted into analytics	Make sure the (3rd party) TWAMP responder is up
SA-821	Control API: Deleting multiple objects in parallel may fail of more than 10 requests in parallel	Check for HTTP error 502 bad gateway and re-send the query
SA-1093	throughput: reflector mode does not work fully in k8s	Only TCP port can be forwarded into container, not UDP - this makes baseline test fail