Assurance Sensor Agents

Overview

Cisco® Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Agents are containerized microservice test agents capable of performing active testing on layers 3-7. Fully integrated with Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance, Sensor Agents can bring additional visibility and intelligence into service and network performance using a minimal footprint.

Each Sensor Agent is deployed as a single-service multiple-use function, that is, there is one dedicated Sensor Agent for each type of test, while each Sensor Agent could possibly have multiple concurrent or queued tests defined.

All Sensor Agents are intended to be "stateless" microservices. This means that no, or as little as possible, configuration resides with the Sensor Agent. Instead, it gets its orders from the orchestration services residing within Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance.

To communicate with the agent orchestration services, Sensor Agents leverage a gateway container referred to as the Sensor Collector. Both management commands and measurement metrics flow through the Sensor Collector service between the Sensor Agent and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance. The orchestration services keep track of which Sensor Agents are connected, through which Sensor Collector, so that a command gets sent to the right Sensor Agent instance.

Sensor Agents have different characteristics depending on its type, but all Sensor Agents share the same set of initial setup parameters, and many of the API configuration parameters are common between Sensor Agents. The mode of operation can differ depending on whether the tests are more of the continuous 24/7 type or more ad-hoc time-boxed functions.

Related Documentation and References

Agent installation guidelines