GroundWork Monitor Architecture
Bringing the benefits of open source
to the enterprise
GroundWork uses an enterprise-class open source architecture to provide a platform that unifies best-of-breed open source systems and network management and monitoring technologies. This approach results in a solution that is affordable, highly flexible and configurable to accommodate varied and rapidly changing environments.
GroundWork Monitor Professional Architecture
Data Collection Layer
The Data Collection Layer is responsible for managing the capabilities of a series of Open Source tools, coordinating their behavior and configuration to deliver an integrated set of data to the Foundation layer for processing, persistence and presentation. The following Open Source tools are included:
- Nagios®*
- SyslogNG
- SNMPTT
- nmap
- RRDtool
Additionally, through our Subscription Plus offerings we integrate Open Source tools such as:
- Cacti
- Ganglia
- ntop
- Network Weathermap
The Monitor Data Collector consists of these entities:
- Monitor Applications. The Monitor Data Collector Applications (Monitor Applications for short) are a collection of Open Source tools. Each has its strength and specialization in monitoring systems, devices, application servers and applications.
- Monitor Data Stage. The Monitor Data Stage is an abstraction for the persisted data provided by Monitor Applications. The Monitor Applications produce Round-Robin Databases (RRDs) or flat Log Files.
- Profile Manager. Profiles are an abstraction for a set of pre-established Monitor Application configuration values that embody "best practices" for a type of resource. These are used by the Monitor Applications to control behavior of the polling and collection of information about network devices, application and web servers, databases, mail servers, etc.
- Feeder Message API. Feeders implement the Feeder Message API for a given Monitor Application. The Feeder is responsible for interacting with the data in the Monitor Data Stage to supply messages to Foundation.
GroundWork Foundation Layer
GroundWork Foundation is responsible for obtaining data from the Monitor Data Collector; persisting the data in a normalized form; and providing application programming interfaces, including a web services API, for high-performance retrieval and insertion of data.
GroundWork Foundation is a GroundWork Open Source project (http://gwfoundation.sourceforge.net/), and integrates technology from a number of open source components, including:
- Eclipse BIRT
- MySQL
- Spring Framework
- Jetty
- Joram
Web Portal Presentation Layer
The Web Portal Presentation Layer, or presentation framework, is responsible for user interfaces for all of the GroundWork Monitor application views; integrating the presentation of user interfaces for third-party applications; and extending the web services integration to external application systems.
The Presentation Framework provides user interaction and visualization including:
- Task-oriented dashboards, from executive overviews to technical details
- Alerts, messages, and status with drilldown
- Performance charting and graphing
- Configuration management and administration
Built on the GroundWork Open Source Guava framework for PHP applications, it includes user security and permissions management capabilities, powerful dashboard and report presentation features, and responsive AJAX-enabled user interaction. Pages refresh seamlessly in the background, without user-initiated screen actions. Open APIs that are provided let you further customize your own views as needed.
Third Party Systems Integration
GroundWork Monitor Professional allows integration with third party applications. These can be just about any application that offers a web user interface or a web services API. The user interface integration is done with capabilities in the Presentation Framework, and in cases where more sophisticated, programmatic integration is required, the Application Integration entity supports the use of SOAP messaging, JMS, and scripted interfaces.
* Nagios is a registered trademark of Nagios Enterprises