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Load a Topology

This topic outlines how to load topologies in Moogsoft Onprem. Topologies let you view alerts and Situations according to the relationships that are important to you. See Topology Overview for more information.

You can use the Topologies API to create and manage small topologies, but this is impractical for large topologies. If your topology .csv file is larger than 40 MB Moogsoft recommends using the Topology Loader utility.

To use the topology loader, you create a comma-separated value (.csv) file of the node-to-node links. The utility builds and caches the topology in the topologies, topo_nodes and topo_links tables in the moogdb database. You can also add an optional description for each link in the topology.

Before you begin

Before you load your topology data into Moogsoft Onprem, ensure you have met the following requirements:

  • You have created each topology for which you want to load nodes and links, using the Topologies API or the Graph Topology Moobot module.

  • You have generated a map of the connected nodes in a .csv file. Create a separate file for each topology.

  • Your .csv file contains all of the nodes that are expected to send events.

  • The lines in your .csv file follow the format: <node1>,<node2>,<optional description>. For example:

    host_a3,host_a1,Link description
host_a3,host_a2,Link description
host_a4,host_a1,Link description

    Note

    If you use a .csv file with the format required by the deprecated Topology Builder utility, the optional <weight> data will be saved as link descriptions.

    If a node name includes a comma, you must enclose the name in double quotes.

    Ensure there are no extra spaces in the file, around the fields and at the beginning and end of each line.

    The topology loader ignores any lines in your file that are not in the correct format. It also ignores any loops such as 'host_x, host_x'. The string node names are case insensitive.

  • You have access to the Moogsoft Onprem server that runs Nginx. The utility matches the hostname you provide against the name on the SSL certification in the Nginx configuration.

Load a topology

Load your topology into Moogsoft Onprem as follows:

  1. Log into the Moogsoft Onprem server that runs Nginx.

  2. Load the .csv topology file into the database using the topology loader found at $MOOGSOFT_HOME/bin:

    ./topology_loader -t=host -f=host_topology.csv --hostname=example.com --credentials=phil:password123

    The -t option is the name of the topology. You must create the topology before you run the utility.

    The -f option specifies the file that contains the topology data.

    The --hostname option specifies the Moogsoft Onprem host running Nginx.

    The --credentials option specifies the Graze username and password, if you are not using the defaults.

    For a description of all available options see Topology Loader Utility Command Reference.

  3. The topology loader utility uses the source data to add nodes and links to the specified topology. The utility records the topological information in the topologies, topo_nodes and topo_links databases. The utility logs any errors to the console.

After you have loaded your topological data, the graph analyser task calculates the Vertex Entropy of the nodes. See Topology Overview for more information.

Modify a topology

You cannot use the Topology Loader utility to modify or delete existing links.

To modify a topology, use the endpoints in the Topologies API or the methods in the Graph Topology Moobot module.

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