Cisco Telemetry: Telegraf, InfluxDB, And Grafana Guide

by Jhon Lennon 55 views

Hey guys! Today, we're diving deep into the awesome world of Cisco telemetry, and I'm gonna show you how to harness its power using Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana. If you're looking to get real-time insights into your network's performance, troubleshoot issues faster, and visualize your data like a pro, then you're in the right place. So buckle up, and let's get started!

What is Cisco Telemetry?

So, what exactly is Cisco telemetry? Simply put, it's the automated process of collecting and transmitting data from your Cisco network devices to a central location for analysis. Think of it as your network devices constantly whispering updates about their health, performance, and traffic patterns. Instead of manually logging into each device and running commands, telemetry provides a continuous stream of data, giving you a real-time view of your network's inner workings.

Why is telemetry so important, you ask? Well, in today's complex network environments, it's crucial to have visibility into what's happening at all times. Telemetry helps you:

  • Proactively identify and resolve issues: By monitoring key metrics, you can spot anomalies and potential problems before they impact your users.
  • Optimize network performance: Understand traffic patterns, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions about network upgrades and configurations.
  • Improve security: Detect suspicious activity and potential security threats in real-time.
  • Automate network management: Reduce manual tasks and free up your IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Cisco offers various telemetry options, including NetFlow, sFlow, and Model-Driven Telemetry (MDT). In this tutorial, we'll focus on using MDT, which offers several advantages over traditional methods. MDT uses standardized data models like YANG to define the structure and content of telemetry data, making it more efficient and easier to process. It also supports streaming data in real-time using protocols like gRPC and gNMI, providing a more scalable and flexible solution.

Introducing Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana

Now that we know what Cisco telemetry is and why it's important, let's introduce the tools we'll be using to collect, store, and visualize the data: Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana. These three amigos form a powerful open-source stack that's perfect for handling telemetry data.

  • Telegraf: Think of Telegraf as your data collection agent. It's a plugin-driven server agent that collects metrics from various sources, including Cisco network devices. Telegraf supports a wide range of input plugins, allowing you to collect data from different sources and formats. It also supports output plugins to send data to various destinations, including InfluxDB.

  • InfluxDB: This is your time-series database. InfluxDB is specifically designed for storing and querying time-series data, which makes it ideal for telemetry data. It's highly scalable, efficient, and provides powerful querying capabilities.

  • Grafana: Grafana is your visualization tool. It allows you to create beautiful and informative dashboards to visualize your telemetry data. Grafana supports a wide range of data sources, including InfluxDB, and provides a rich set of visualization options.

Together, Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana provide a complete solution for collecting, storing, and visualizing Cisco telemetry data. With this stack, you can gain real-time insights into your network's performance, troubleshoot issues faster, and make data-driven decisions.

Setting Up the Environment

Alright, let's get our hands dirty and start setting up the environment. We'll need to install Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana on a server. You can use a physical server, a virtual machine, or even a cloud instance. For this tutorial, I'll assume you're using a Linux-based server. Here's how to install each component:

Installing InfluxDB

First up, InfluxDB. Follow these steps to get it installed:

  1. Download the InfluxDB package: Head over to the official InfluxDB downloads page and grab the appropriate package for your Linux distribution. You can usually find .deb packages for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems and .rpm packages for CentOS/RHEL-based systems.

  2. Install the package: Once you've downloaded the package, use your system's package manager to install it. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu, you can use the following command:

    sudo dpkg -i influxdb_<version>_<arch>.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -f

    On CentOS/RHEL, you can use the following command:

    sudo yum localinstall influxdb-<version>.<arch>.rpm

  3. Start the InfluxDB service: After the installation is complete, start the InfluxDB service using the following command:

    sudo systemctl start influxdb

  4. Enable the InfluxDB service: To ensure that InfluxDB starts automatically on boot, enable the service using the following command:

    sudo systemctl enable influxdb

  5. Verify the installation: To verify that InfluxDB is running correctly, you can use the influx command-line client. Open a terminal and type influx. You should see the InfluxDB prompt.

Installing Telegraf

Next, we'll install Telegraf, our trusty data collector:

  1. Download the Telegraf package: Go to the official Telegraf downloads page and download the appropriate package for your Linux distribution.

  2. Install the package: Use your system's package manager to install the package. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu, you can use the following command:

    sudo dpkg -i telegraf_<version>_<arch>.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -f

    On CentOS/RHEL, you can use the following command:

    sudo yum localinstall telegraf-<version>.<arch>.rpm

  3. Start the Telegraf service: Start the Telegraf service using the following command:

    sudo systemctl start telegraf

  4. Enable the Telegraf service: Enable the Telegraf service to start automatically on boot using the following command:

    sudo systemctl enable telegraf

  5. Configure Telegraf: We'll configure Telegraf in the next section to collect data from our Cisco devices.

Installing Grafana

Lastly, let's install Grafana, our awesome visualization tool:

  1. Download the Grafana package: Visit the official Grafana downloads page and download the appropriate package for your Linux distribution.

  2. Install the package: Use your system's package manager to install the package. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu, you can use the following command:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y grafana

    On CentOS/RHEL, you can use the following command:

    sudo yum install grafana

  3. Start the Grafana service: Start the Grafana service using the following command:

    sudo systemctl start grafana-server

  4. Enable the Grafana service: Enable the Grafana service to start automatically on boot using the following command:

    sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

  5. Access Grafana: Open your web browser and navigate to http://your_server_ip:3000. You should see the Grafana login page. The default username is admin and the default password is admin. You'll be prompted to change the password after your first login.

Configuring Telegraf for Cisco Telemetry

Now comes the fun part: configuring Telegraf to collect telemetry data from your Cisco devices. We'll need to configure the Telegraf input plugin for Cisco MDT. Here's how:

  1. Locate the Telegraf configuration file: The Telegraf configuration file is usually located at /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf. Open this file in a text editor.

  2. Configure the Cisco MDT input plugin: Add the following configuration block to the [[inputs.cisco_telemetry_mdt]] section of the configuration file. If the section doesn't exist, create it.

    [[inputs.cisco_telemetry_mdt]]
  ## URLs of the gRPC/gNMI servers to listen on
  servers = ["grpc://your_cisco_device_ip:57777"]

  ## TLS configuration
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  # insecure = true

  ## Encoding of the telemetry data (e.g., json, gpb)
  encoding = "json"

  ## YANG modules to use for decoding the data
  models = ["ietf-interfaces", "openconfig-interfaces"]
    • Replace your_cisco_device_ip with the IP address of your Cisco device.
    • The servers option specifies the gRPC/gNMI server address to listen on. The default port for Cisco MDT is 57777.
    • The tls_cert, tls_key, and insecure options are used for configuring TLS encryption. If you're not using TLS, you can comment out these lines.
    • The encoding option specifies the encoding of the telemetry data. Cisco MDT typically uses JSON or GPB (Google Protocol Buffers).
    • The models option specifies the YANG modules to use for decoding the data. You'll need to specify the appropriate YANG modules for the data you want to collect. Common modules include ietf-interfaces and openconfig-interfaces.

  3. Configure the InfluxDB output plugin: Make sure the [[outputs.influxdb]] section is configured correctly to send data to your InfluxDB instance. A basic configuration might look like this:

    [[outputs.influxdb]]
  ## The address of the InfluxDB server
  urls = ["http://localhost:8086"]

  ## The name of the InfluxDB database to write to
  database = "cisco_telemetry"
    • The urls option specifies the address of your InfluxDB server. The default port for InfluxDB is 8086.
    • The database option specifies the name of the InfluxDB database to write the telemetry data to. You'll need to create this database in InfluxDB.

  4. Restart Telegraf: After making changes to the Telegraf configuration file, restart the Telegraf service using the following command:

    sudo systemctl restart telegraf

Configuring the Cisco Device for MDT

Now that Telegraf is configured to collect data, we need to configure the Cisco device to send telemetry data using MDT. The configuration steps will vary depending on the specific Cisco device and IOS version you're using. However, the basic steps are as follows:

  1. Enable NETCONF: MDT relies on NETCONF to configure the telemetry sessions. Make sure NETCONF is enabled on your device. This usually involves configuring a NETCONF user and enabling the NETCONF service.
  2. Configure a telemetry subscription: Create a telemetry subscription that specifies the data you want to collect and the destination to send the data to. This involves specifying the YANG modules, the data paths, the sampling interval, and the gRPC/gNMI server address.

Here's an example of how to configure a telemetry subscription on a Cisco IOS XE device using the CLI:

telemetry ietf subscription 101
  encoding encode-kvgpb
  filter xpath /interfaces/interface/state/counters
  source-address 192.168.1.1  # Replace with your device's IP
  stream yang-push
  update-policy periodic 1000  # Sample every 1000 milliseconds
destination 101
  address 192.168.1.100  # Replace with your Telegraf server's IP
  port 57777
  protocol grpc-tcp
!  
telemetry ietf subscription 101 receiver destination-group 101
  • Replace 192.168.1.1 with the IP address of your Cisco device.
  • Replace 192.168.1.100 with the IP address of your Telegraf server.
  • The filter xpath option specifies the data to collect using an XPath expression. This example collects interface counters.
  • The update-policy periodic option specifies the sampling interval in milliseconds.
  • The destination section specifies the gRPC/gNMI server address and protocol.

Creating Grafana Dashboards

With Telegraf collecting data and InfluxDB storing it, it's time to create some Grafana dashboards to visualize your telemetry data. Here's how:

  1. Add InfluxDB as a data source: In Grafana, go to Configuration > Data Sources and click