Cloud Discovery

Traverse provides the ability to discover and monitor computer and storage resources as well as applications running within public cloud providers. At this time Traverse supports Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Services.

Cloud discovery sessions differ from typical network discovery sessions, because cloud instances are not necessarily networked with each other. The IP addresses for each cloud instance may be completely unrelated to each other. Cloud discovery uses an API request to return a list of the cloud instances currently available for a specified cloud user account.

Prerequisites

1. Identify the account on Amazon AWS Cloud Services you wish to monitor with Traverse.
2. Obtain the API access key and secret key pair for this AWS Cloud Services account. This is required to specify credentials that can access cloud instances in this cloud user account. For more information, see Managing Access Keys for IAM Users.

Enabling Cloud Discovery in Traverse

If you don't see Cloud Discovery Sessions as a section on the Administration > Discovery page, then perform the following procedure to enable cloud discovery.

1. Logon to Traverse as superuser.
2. Identify the user class and admin class of the department you are modifying.
3. Navigate to the Superuser > Admin Class page.
4. Select the User Class Mappings link for the admin class row you are modifying.
5. Select the Update link for the user class row you are modifying.
6. Ensure Create/Delete, Read, Update and Suspend/Resume checkboxes are checked for the Cloud access privilege.

Any department using this combination of admin class and user class is now enabled to run cloud discovery.

Specify Login Credentials

1. Navigate to Administration > Other > Shared Credentials.
2. Click the lock icon. Then click the plus icon.
3. Select the department. Then select Amazon Web Services.
4. Provide a descriptive Name.
5. Specify the appropriate API Key and Secret Key. Leave other options unchanged.
6. Click Save.

Run a Cloud Discovery Session

1. Logon to Traverse as a department user. The department should already have cloud discovery enabled.
2. Navigate to the Administration > Discovery page.
3. Click the New Cloud Discovery Session link. The Create Cloud Instance displays.

• Cloud Provider - The only option is Amazon Web Services.
• Cloud Instance Name - Enter a name for this cloud discovery session.
• Create in Location - Select a location. The DGE extension at this location will perform the queries against Amazon.
• Scheduled Discovery
  • Recurring - If selected, specify the number of hours to repeat cloud discovery.
  • One Time/Manual - If selected, cloud discovery is run only once.
• Enable Automation - If unchecked, cloud instances are discovered without taking further action on them. If checked, the following monitoring deployment options display.
  • For New/Activated Instances - Start Monitoring, Ignore & Log, Log Only
  • For Suspended/Stopped Instances - Suspend Monitoring, Ignore & Log, Log Only
  • For Deleted/Destroyed Instance - Remove Monitoring, Suspend Monitoring, Ignore & Log, Log Only

  Note: Leaving this checkbox off is recommended the first time cloud discovery is run on a cloud user account. This allows you to review the list of cloud instances created in a cloud user account before deciding whether to deploy monitoring options automatically.

• Click the Use Existing radio option, then select the credential you created in the Specify Login Credentials procedure above.
• Click the Discover Cloud Instance button.

Reviewing Cloud Discovery Results

Once cloud discovery has completed, the Cloud Discovery Result page displays. The page lists two sections.

• Discovered Cloud Instances - These are the new cloud instances that have been discovered since the last time cloud discovery was run. Selecting these discovered instances on this page will provision them for monitoring.
• Existing Cloud Instances - These are existing cloud instances that already have monitoring provisioned on them. Unselecting these instances will remove all monitors provisioned on these instances.

Click the Submit button to display the Manage Devices page.

Deploying Monitoring Tests on Cloud Instances

Using the Manage Devices page, monitoring tests are deployed on discovered cloud instances the same way monitoring tests are deployed on typical network devices. See Updating Multiple Tests about the details of working with this page.

Note: Changing the options on some discovered cloud instances is not allowed. The set of tests deployed on certain cloud instances is specified by a fixed device template.

Click the Submit button to deploy monitoring tests on selected cloud instances.

Viewing the Status of Cloud Instances

Navigate to the Status page to see the monitoring results returned from your cloud instances. Cloud instances display Status data the same as any other device.