Skylight sensor agents 24.05 Release Notes

Overview

Accedian is pleased to announce release 24.05 of Skylight sensor: agents.

What's New

Release 24.05 of the Skylight sensor: agent contains a number of new features and functions compared to the previous 23.11 release:

• Agent actuate by default leverages kernel timestamps for receive path, improving delay measurement accuracy
• Base Alpine image update to 3.19.1 for latest security patches
• Agent transfer changed reporting timestamp to start-of-test as the main time-series timestamp (was end-of-test)
• Agent health status reporting via API for CloudOps (End-user Analytics UI not available in this release)

Release Components

Agent Characteristics and Capabilities

• *) A vCPU is considered as a thread on standard x86 CPU, running typically at 2.2 to 2.4GHz.
• **) Typical value on system supporting kernel timestamps on receive
• ***) Since transfer agent executes tests in sequence, care needs to be taken to not add more sessions than can be finished within the session repeat interval. Example: if 60s repeat interval is used, and 10 sessions each with max execution time of 5s are created, then (5 * 10) 50s is the max execution time for all tests, and this fits within the 60s repeat interval. See transfer agent configuration for more details.

• 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 24.05 is backwards compatible with the docker-compose configuration of all versions back to 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.

See current docker pull strings for latest release here: Agent Installation Guidelines

Agent session configuration in the orchestration is backwards compatible back to 22.11, so no session or test configuration changes are required when upgrading agents or Analytics to 24.05.

Deployment Considerations

The sensor: agents deploy as containers on x86_64 and arm64 environments. Thus, a container environment is required and we recommend docker 23.0.6 or later.