✨📊📈📉🤖 RADKit-to-Grafana Dashboard Framework

A containerized framework to create dynamic Grafana dashboards (for current configurations and time-series data) by interacting with Cisco RADKit servers and network devices.

Disclaimer: The screenshot above represents a possible Use Case of the framework in this repository.

📝 Project Overview

This project, "RADKit-to-Grafana Dashboard Framework," helps you gain deep insights into your network infrastructure. It integrates RADKit for device interaction, InfluxDB for time-series data storage, and Grafana for powerful visualizations. This allows for continuous monitoring of network configurations and provides a foundation for data analysis and correlation, aiding in strategic infrastructure decisions.

🏗️ Architecture

The solution is containerized using Docker Compose and comprises the following services:

• 🧲 fastapi-middleware: A Python FastAPI server that acts as the central bridge. It provides API endpoints to interact with RADKit and facilitates data flow to InfluxDB and Grafana.

• 📊 grafana: A Grafana container for visualizing collected data, enabling real-time monitoring and historical analysis.

• 📈 influxdb: An InfluxDB database container specifically for time-series data storage.

Additionally, these stand-alone tools are included:

• 🧑‍💻 radkit-client-onboarding: A utility to onboard your user to the RADKit cloud for non-interactive (password-less) authentication, generating necessary certificate files.

• ⏰ radkit-to-grafana-collection-scheduler: A cron job-based scheduler (Python container with threading) that periodically triggers FastAPI endpoints to efficiently collect time-series data from RADKit and push it to InfluxDB.

⚙️ Setup

📋 Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

• Docker
• Docker Compose (usually included with Docker Desktop)

This framework is intended for Linux-based OS hosts, and has been successfully tested in macOS and various Linux distributions. The utilities use Makefile targets which are not compatible with Windows systems.

🔑 Configuration

1. Add a Remote User to RADKit

Ensure your Cisco RADKit server has at least one active user in the Remote Users section. Refer to the RADKit official documentation - Adding remote users for details.

2: Clone this repository

Issue the following command to clone this repository in your host computer:

git clone https://github.com/ponchotitlan/radkit-to-grafana-dash.git

3. Configure config.yaml

Edit the radkit-to-grafana-config/config.yaml file with your RADKit server details:

radkit-config:
  server-host: <YOUR_RADKIT_SERVER_HOST>
  server-port: <YOUR_RADKIT_SERVER_PORT>
  radkit-service-username: <YOUR_RADKIT_REMOTE_USERNAME>
  radkit-service-code: <YOUR_RADKIT_SERVICE_CODE>

4. Onboard User for Non-Interactive Authentication

Run make onboard from the repository's base directory. This command uses a container utility to onboard the Remote User (specified in your config.yaml) to the RADKit cloud, enabling password-less authentication.

make onboard

Follow the prompts, including providing a password for your new private key. This process generates certificate files needed for automated authentication. Upon successful completion, you'll see a message confirming the identity files are copied, indicating you're ready to proceed.

docker build -f radkit-to-grafana-client-onboarding/Dockerfile -t radkit-client-onboarding .
docker run -it --rm \
                -v "/radkit-to-grafana-dash/radkit-to-grafana-config:/radkit-to-grafana-config" \
                radkit-client-onboarding

--- ✨🔑✨ Onboarding user ([email protected]) into the RADKit Cloud for non-interactive authentication ---

---⚠️👇 A link will appear down below on short. Please click it or copy/paste in your web browser 👇⚠️ ---

    https://id.cisco.com/oauth2/default/v1/authorize?response_type=...

New private key password: *********
Confirm: *********
. . .

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
✅📁🔑 Successfully copied '/root/.radkit/identities' to '/radkit-to-grafana-config/identity-files/identities' in this repository!
You are now ready to mount the radkit-to-grafana environment.
👉 Issue the command `make` to build and run the system. Provide the password that you used in this setup.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5. Develop Your RADKit API Endpoints

Define your custom API endpoints for populating Grafana dashboards within the radkit-to-grafana-fastapi-middleware/main.py file.

👉👉 For a detailed guide on developing these endpoints, refer to this guide.

🚀 Running the Services

Target	Description
all	Builds the Docker image and then sets up and runs the radkit-to-grafana services. This is the default target.
build	Builds the Docker image named fastapi-middleware using the Dockerfile located in the radkit-to-grafana-fastapi-middleware/ directory.
run	Prompts you for the password of the RADKit onboarded user, and then starts the Docker Compose services defined in docker-compose.yaml in detached mode, waiting for them to be healthy.
stop	Stops all the containers without deleting them.
clean	Cleans up the environment by bringing down the Docker Compose services, removing the fastapi-middleware Docker image, and deleting the temporary secret file.
default	A composite target that first executes build to create the Docker image, and then executes run to set up and start the radkit-to-grafana services.

First-Time Usage Example

To build and run all services for the first time, simply run:

make

When running make or make run, you will be prompted for the private key password you set during the make onboard process.

A successful startup will show output similar to this:

--- 🏗️ Building the fastapi-middleware image ---
docker build -t fastapi-middleware radkit-to-grafana-fastapi-middleware/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 🚀 Setting up the radkit-to-grafana services ---
🔑 Enter the Private Key password of 'radkit-service-username' from your config.yaml file:
[+] Running 4/4
 ✔ Network radkit-to-grafana-app-network                       Created
 ✔ Container radkit-to-grafana-fastapi-middleware-1            Healthy 
 ✔ Container grafana                                           Healthy
 ✔ Container influxdb                                          Healthy
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--- ✅ radkit-to-grafana services up and running! ---
-------------------------------------------------------------------

💡 Usage

📊 Accessing Grafana

Once the services are up and running, Grafana will be accessible via your web browser:

http://localhost:3000

✨📈📉 Creating your own Grafana dashboards

👉👉 Learn how to build your own Grafana dashboards using your custom API endpoints by following this guide.

⏰ Setting up Data Collection (Cron Job)

👉👉 To set up a cron job for scheduled data collection (periodically invoking your FastAPI endpoints for time-series visualizations), refer to this guide.

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Made with ☕️ by Poncho Sandoval - Developer Advocate 🥑 @ DevNet - Cisco Systems 🇵🇹