Appliance Administration

This section describes administrative tasks including renaming the appliance, software updates, utility management, appliance reboot, certificate management, and viewing hardware and software details about the appliance.

Rename the appliance

Changing the appliance name respawns the Minion on the appliance. This process triggers a brief service interruption. The appliance name is then sent to your OpenNMS Meridian instance and appears there.

We recommend configuring this information as part of the initial Minion Appliance deployment.

To rename the appliance, sign in to the terminal user interface (TUI), type the correct number to access the system settings, and follow the prompts.

Appliance names can contain only alphanumeric and '-.' characters.

Update appliance software

By default, the appliance software begins updates weekly on Wednesday between 4:00-6:00 UTC. To change this default time, create a monthly, weekly, or daily schedule that suits your requirements. Downtime for software updates is minimal, but could last several minutes depending on the following:

  • How many snaps are being upgraded.

  • Available bandwidth for downloads.

  • Software installation time, which may include a reboot (for example, the hardware appliance takes 2-5 minutes to reboot).

We recommend that you schedule updates for time ranges that are the least disruptive for your network, particularly if you have a lot of Minion Appliances. Updates will start randomly within the time range you specify, meaning Minion Appliance updates are staggered. Depending on when an update starts, it may not finish during the specified time range, particularly if it begins near the end of the range.

In the unlikely event that an update does not start at the scheduled time, the update fails silently and waits for the next scheduled update time to try again. To troubleshoot an update issue, navigate to Appliances and click the vertical ellipsis (⋮) beside the appliance that you want to troubleshoot. In the drop-down list, click Appliance Utilities to view recent update activity for appliance software.

To change the software update time, you must create a schedule, add it to an appliance profile, and add that profile to an appliance. You can create multiple appliance profiles, each with different update schedules, and apply them to specific groups of Minion Appliances to ensure software updates occur at the best time for the location of those appliances.

For more information on the Minion Appliance architecture and how software updates work, see Minion architecture.

To create a software update schedule:

  1. Navigate to Appliances  Update Schedules and click Add New.

  2. Click the Monthly, Weekly, or Daily tab to create the corresponding type of schedule.

  3. Fill in the appropriate information and click Add New.

    • For the "week of the month" option, use "last" to indicate the final week of the month. This captures months that have five weeks, and defaults to "Fourth" with months that have only four weeks.

Choose a descriptive name for the schedule. This will make it easier to choose a specific schedule when you add it to an appliance profile.

Manage subscriptions

Depending on your setup, the Portal may include some or all of the following subscriptions:

  • Meridian

  • Appliance

  • Time Series

An Appliance subscription specifies the number of Minion Appliances that can provide monitoring services. You can use the Appliance Subscription page to associate Minion Appliances with your organization.

Follow these steps to view your Appliance subscription and activate or remove appliances:

  1. Click Subscriptions in the left navigation menu.

  2. Click the Appliance tab.

  3. In the Available Appliances list, choose the appliance that you want to add and click Activate Appliance. Repeat for all appliances that you want to activate.

    • To remove an appliance, click Deactivate beside its name.

  4. Click Appliances in the left navigation menu to view and manage activated appliances.

    • Activated appliances display a green link symbol.

    • Unactivated appliances display a red crossed link symbol.

Manage utilities

The appliance has several utilities (snaps) associated with it that you may want to update outside of the scheduled update time to ensure that you have the latest version. You can also view details of these utilities and see a log of changes made to the system. To manage utilities, the appliance must be online.

Only users with Admin privileges can update snaps.

To view the status of the utilities associated with an appliance and update them, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Appliances and locate the appliance whose utilities you want to update.

  2. Click the vertical ellipsis (⋮) to view the drop-down menu and click Appliance Utilities.

  3. In the Update Snap area, choose a single snap from the list and click Update.

    You can also click Update all Snaps to update all of an appliance’s snaps. If you choose this option, the appliance will reboot.

Reboot the appliance

You should not need to reboot an appliance, but if you do, be aware that you will experience temporary loss of connectivity during the reboot period.

Only users with Admin privileges can reboot an appliance.

  1. Navigate to Appliances and locate the appliance that you want to reboot.

  2. Click the vertical ellipsis (⋮) to view the drop-down menu, and click Appliance Utilities.

  3. Click Reboot.

  4. Click Yes when prompted to confirm reboot.

The reboot activity appears as a series of events (reboot command received, successful reconnection, and so on) in the appliance events screen.

You can also reboot the appliance when logged into the terminal user interface (TUI).

Add certificates

You may want to use a custom certificate to secure communication with OpenNMS (via HTTPS) or with the message broker (OpenWire over TLS). To do so, you need to add your certificate to the Minion’s default trust store. Certificates can be .pem or binary files.

Once you upload a certificate, it becomes read-only and cannot be updated.

To add a custom certificate, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Appliances  Certificates.

  2. Click Add New.

  3. Type a name in the Name box.

  4. Upload the certificate file, and click Add New.

You must add the certificate to a connectivity profile to associate it with an appliance. You can also add the certificate to a network profile to allow communication with a custom registry.

Update certificates

Because certificates have associated expiry dates, you must update them before they expire to maintain the secure connection with OpenNMS or the message broker. Your IT team can provide you with new certificates.

To update a certificate, upload the file and edit the connectivity profile:

  1. Click OpenNMS Meridian in the left navigation menu.

  2. Click Edit beside the name of the profile that you want to update.

  3. Click Edit beside the name of the connectivity profile associated with the old certificate.

  4. On the HTTP Configuration page, select the new certificate and remove the old one.

    • (Optional) Click Test to test the HTTP configuration settings.

  5. Click Next.

  6. Update the broker details as desired, and click Next.

    • Repeat steps 3-5 for each connectivity profile associated with the old certificate.

This change restarts all Minions associated with the updated certificate. This process triggers a brief service interruption.

Manage certificates

Follow these steps to delete or download a certificate:

  1. Click Appliances  Certificates in the left navigation menu.

  2. Find the certificate that you want to manage and make any relevant changes:

    • Delete the certificate.

    • Download the certificate.

Certificate cleanup

OpenNMS Portal supports multiple certificates. Over time, you may end up with a number of expired or otherwise unused certificates in your environment. When that happens, you can manually remove them:

  1. Click Appliances  Certificates in the left navigation menu.

  2. Click Delete beside the certificate that you want to remove

  3. Confirm deletion.

    • Repeat these steps for each certificate that you want to remove.

Manage connectivity profiles

This feature is available only to users with a Meridian subscription.

A connectivity profile specifies how the Minion communicates with your Meridian instance. It includes the URL of the message broker (Kafka or ActiveMQ) and the username and password (ActiveMQ) with which to connect to the broker.

You must create your Minion username and password in OpenNMS (see User Creation and Configuration in the main OpenNMS documentation).

To edit, manage, or delete a connectivity profile, click the pencil symbol next to the instance that you want to update. Select the profile to be associated with the instance from the Profile list and save your changes.

Making configuration changes to a connectivity profile respawns all Minions associated with that profile. This process triggers a brief service interruption.

For information on managing feature profiles, see Feature profiles.

Specify a Minion Appliance's geographical location

A map that displays the physical location of your appliance is available in the appliance’s configuration screen.

Display the Minion Appliance’s geographical location on the map:

  1. Click Appliances in the left navigation menu.

  2. Click the Edit symbol beside the appliance that you want to modify.

  3. Expand the Physical Location section.

  4. Click a location on the map or click the magnifying glass symbol and type the street address of your appliance location.

  5. Click Update.

View appliance details

To view hardware and software information about an appliance (make, model, serial number, MAC address, networking details, and so on), follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Appliances and locate the appliance whose details you want to view.

  2. Click the vertical ellipsis (⋮) to view the drop-down menu and click Appliance Details.

  3. Expand sections to display the information you want to view.

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