= Overview of Operational Monitoring =

''This is a working page for the [wiki:OperationalMonitoring operational monitoring project]. It is a draft representing work in progress.''

== Introduction ==

The monitoring architecture is based on the concept of distributing sources of information in a common fashion.  The sources of information (relational data or time-series data) is placed into what are called "Local Datastores".  These datastores have a common REST polling API for retrieving information.  The component that automatically retrieves data from the Local Datastores are called "collectors". 

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  <caption align="bottom"> <b> Architectural Highlight of a Collector and a Local Datastore </b></caption>
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A collector can poll a variety of datastores and any subset of data within each datastore.  A monitoring application relies on a collector for its data queries, so collectors poll whatever data is necessary to have sufficient data to support the attached monitoring applications (i.e., alerting, reporting, historical analysis, visualization).  

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  <caption align="bottom"> <b> Monitoring Architecture </b></caption>
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Although there are multiple collectors, a single monitoring application uses only a single collector; however this is not a strict requirement of the system.