Tools
Tools to view NSO status and perform specialized tasks.
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NSO 6.5
Tools to view NSO status and perform specialized tasks.
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The Tools view includes utilities that you can use to run specific tasks on your deployment, such as running compliance reports, etc.
The following tools are available:
: Gathers and displays useful statistics of your deployment.
: Used to perform upgrades to the packages running in NSO.
: Used to manage a High Availability (HA) setup in your deployment.
: Shows current alarms/events in your deployment and provides options to manage them.
: Shortcut to the Commit Manager.
: Used to run compliance checks on your NSO network.
The Insights view collects and displays the following types of operational information using the /ncs:metrics data model to present useful statistics:
Real-time data about transactions, commit queues, and northbound sessions.
Sessions created and closed towards northbound interfaces since the last restart (CLI, JSON-RPC, NETCONF, RESTCONF, SNMP).
Transactions since the last restart (committed, aborted, and conflicting). You can select between the running and operational data stores.
Devices and their sync statuses.
CDB info about its size, compaction, etc.
In the Packages view, you can upload, install, and view the operational state of custom packages in NSO.
Adding a new package via the Web UI entails uploading the package and then installing it. You can add multiple packages at once. A package can be in one of the following operational states after upload: Up, Reload required, Not installed, and Error.
To add a new package:
Click the Add package button.
In the Add package dialog, browse the package using the Add button. The file format must be .tar, .tar.gz, or .tgz. You can add multiple packages at once.
Click Upload. A result is shown whether the operation was successful or not.
Once the upload has finished successfully, select the packages to install. If you want to replace an existing package with a new one, use the Replace package if already exists option, and to bypass or ignore version mismatches, use the Allow NSO mismatch option.
Click Install. A result is shown whether the operation was successful or not. For more details and troubleshooting the errors, see the trace output.
Perform a reload of packages if a Reload required oper state is shown.
To view package details:
Click the package name. This reveals information about the package, such as its status, version, location, etc. You can also uninstall a package in this view.
To reload the packages:
Click the Reload all packages button.
In the dialog, set the Max wait time (sec) for the commit queue to empty before proceeding with the reload. The default is 10 seconds if you leave the field unset.
Set the Timeout action behavior to define what happens after the maximum wait time is over, i.e., kill the open transactions and continue, or cancel (fail) the package reload operation altogether. The default for this setting is fail.
Apply additional action parameters from the following (optional): Force (to force package reload overriding issues or warnings), Dry run (to simulate the package reload process without making any actual changes), and Wait commit queue empty (to wait until the commit queue is empty before proceeding).
Click Reload. A live trace of the reload operation is displayed while the packages are being reloaded.
Click Done when the operation has finished.
To uninstall a package:
The High Availability view is used to visualize your HA setup (rule-based or Raft).
The Alarms view displays alerts in the system for your NSO-managed objects and provides options to manage them.
You can search and sort the alarm list to display alarm results according to your need.
To search for an alarm against an object, search for the object name (e.g., device name).
To sort the alarms list, use one of the specified criteria from Alarm type , Severity, Is cleared, or Handling state.
Alarm Details
Individual alarm details are accessible by clicking the severity level icon on an alarm. This brings up the alarm's details, its status (severity) changes, and historical handling information.
The Web UI provides additional options to compress and purge alarms.
The Compress alarms action streamlines the alarm entries by deleting their historical state changes that occured before the last one (i.e., the only the latest state change is kept), while keeping the alarm entries intact.
The Purge alarms action completely removes the alarm entries according to the specified criteria.
To utilize these features, click the respective button and follow the on-screen instructions.
Alarm handling refers to attending to an alarm. This usually entails reviewing the alarm and setting a state on it, for example, Acknowledged. Historical handling state changes are accessible in alarm details.
To set an alarm handling state:
Set the alarm state to one of the following: None, Acknowledged, Investigation, Observation, and Closed.
Enter a description (optional).
Click Set state. This sets the alarm handling state as well as records the state change under the Alarm handling tab in alarm details.
The Commit manager displays notifications about commits pending to be approved. Any time a change (a transaction) is made in NSO, the Commit Manager displays a notification to review the change. You can then choose to confirm or revert the commit.
Transactions and Commits
Take special note of the Commit Manager. Whenever a transaction has started, the active configuration data changes can be inspected and evaluated before they are committed and pushed to the network. The data is saved to the NSO datastore and pushed to the network when a user presses Commit.
Any network-wide configuration change can be picked up as a rollback file. The rollback can then be applied to undo whatever happened to the network.
To review a configuration change:
Review the available changes appearing as Current transaction. If there are errors in the change, the Commit Manager alerts you and suggests possible corrections. You can then fix them and press Re-validate to clear the errors.
Click Revert to undo or Commit to confirm the changes in the transaction.
Start a transaction to load or save configuration data using the Load/Save option, which you can then review for commit. The following tabs are available:
Rollback: To load data that reverts an earlier change.
Files: To load data from a local file on your disk.
Paste: To load data by pasting it in.
Save: To save loaded data to a file on your local disk.
In the Commit manager view, the following tabs are shown.
changes tab: To list the changes and actions done in the system, e.g., deleting a device or changing its properties.
errors tab: To list the errors encountered while making changes. You can review the errors, make changes, and revalidate the error using the Re-validate option.
warnings tab: To list the warnings encountered while making changes.
config tab: To list the configuration changes associated with the change.
native config tab: To list the device configuration data in the native config.
Web UI is the recommended way of running the compliance reports.
The following tabs are available in this view:
Compliance reports
Report results
The Compliance reports tab is used to view, create, run, and manage the existing compliance reports.
To create a new compliance report:
In the Compliance reporting view -> Compliance reports tab, click New report.
In the Create new report pop-up, enter the report name and click Create.
General tab: to configure the report name. Configuration options include:
Report name: Displays the report name and allows editing of the report name.
Devices tab: to configure device compliance checks. Configuration options include:
Device choice: Include All devices or only Some devices to include in compliance checks. If Some devices is selected, specify the devices using a device group, an XPath expression, or individual devices.
Current out of sync: Check the device's current status and report if the device is in sync or out of sync. Possible values are true (yes, request a check-sync) and false (no, do not request a check-sync).
Historic changes: Include or exclude previous changes to devices using the commit log. Possible values are true (yes, include) and false (no, exclude).
Services tab: to configure service compliance checks. Configuration options include:
Service choice: Include All services or only Some services. If Some services is selected, specify the services using service type, an XPath expression, or individual service instances.
Current out of sync: Check the service's current status and report if the service is in sync or out of sync. Possible values are true (yes, request a check-sync) and false (no, do not request a check-sync).
Historic changes: Include or exclude previous changes to services using the commit log. Possible values are true (yes, include) and false (no, exclude).
Click Create report when the report setup is complete. The changes are saved and applied immediately.
To run a compliance report:
In the Compliance reports tab, click the desired report and then click Run report.
Specify the following in the Run report pop-up:
Report title: A title for this specific report run.
Historical time interval. Select the time range. The report runs with the maximum possible interval if you do not specify an interval.
Click Run report.
The Reports results tab is used to view the status and results of the compliance reports that have been run.
The report's results show if the devices/services included in the report are compliant/in-sync or have violations. A summary of the report status is readily available in the Report results tab. To fetch detailed information on the report, click the report name. The following information panes are then available:
Details: Includes specifics about the report that was run, such as report name, date/time it was run, time range, and contents analyzed (i.e., services, devices, and rollback files).
Results overview: Shows a summary of results with visuals on the number of devices and services that are presently compliant/in-sync.
Historic compliance: Shows a history of compliance (in percentages) for the devices and services that were included in the report run. The graph is presented based on the previous report runs and you can narrow down the graph to show data from specific periods (e.g., last 10 runs only). Predefined time ranges include last 30 days, last month, last 6 months, and last year, whereas custom time ranges allow users to define their own time ranges. The default preset is set to last 30 days.
Devices/Services/Errors: Displays individual compliance and error information for analyzed devices and services. In case of non-compliance, a 'diff view' is available.
The reload action is the equivalent of the packages reload command in CLI and is used to load new/updated packages. If NSO is used in an HA or Raft setup, the packages ha sync action is invoked instead of the usual packages reload action, i.e., the packages will be synced in the cluster. Read more about the reload action in and for HA in . General package concepts are covered in .
Go to the package details view and click the Uninstall button, or use the more options button in the packages list.
Actions can be performed on the cluster using the Configuration editor -> Actions tab. Possible actions are further described in the High Availability documentation under .
An alarm is raised when an NSO object undergoes a state change that requires attention. The alarms, depending on their severity, are categorized as Critical, Major, Minor, Warning, and Indeterminate. Detailed alarm management concepts are covered in and different alarm types are described in .
In the Alarms main view, click the more options button on the desired alarm and click Set alarm handling state.
Access the Commit Manager by clicking its icon in the banner.
Commit Options: When committing a transaction, you have the possibility to choose Commit options and perform a commit with the specified commit option(s). Examples of commit options are: No revision drop, No deploy, No networking, etc. Commit options are described in detail in the JSON-RPC API documentation under .
In the Commit manager view, you can fetch additional information about the leaf by enabling more node options and clicking the info button.
commit queue tab: To manage commit queues. See for more information.
The Compliance reporting view is used to create and run compliance reports to check the current situation, check historical events, or both. The conceptual aspects of the compliance reporting feature are discussed in greater depth in the section.
Next, set up the compliance report using the following tabs. For a more detailed description of Compliance Reporting concepts and related configuration options, see .
Compliance templates: If a compliance template should be used to check for compliance (see ). You have the option to add a compliance template using the Add template option or convert an existing device template into a compliance template by using the Create from device template option (which can then be added using the Add template option). To enforce devices to comply exactly with the template's configuration, use Strict mode; see for more information.
In the Compliance reports tab, you can apply the following actions on the report by selecting it using the checkbox and using the more options button.
