Monitoring Juniper networks with Grafana

Introduction

This article will dive into your questions surrounding monitoring Juniper Networks. In addition, you will be able to learn how Grafana can help you to monitor Juniper networks systems. As you read through, you will be able to get the answers for the following questions:

• How can we visualize metrics from Juniper networks with Grafana?
• What would an integration of InfluxDB with Grafana be like?
• What are the strengths of Grafana?
• Will Grafana be a good choice for monitoring Juniper?
• Is PyEZ suitable for the NETCONF Interface?
• What are Google Protocol buffers or GPB?

What are Juniper Networks and Grafana?

Juniper Networks is a multinational company that provides products related to network and security. Grafana is an open-source web application platform for monitoring. Grafana can visualize diverse metrics and help users to monitor CPU, memory, and more. With the combination of Juniper and Grafana, you can untangle the inherent complexity of network monitoring.

Major benefits of using Grafana for Juniper Networks

Monitoring and troubleshooting infrastructure and services can become easier with Grafana. Prometheus is a toolkit that monitors your system, while Grafana visualizes metrics. MetricFire provides a hosted version of Prometheus that includes storing your data. You only need minimal configuration to gain in-depth insights about your application performance.

MetricFire offers a 14-day free trial that you can use to test Grafana for Juniper monitoring.

Periodic surveying interface by NETCONF

NETCONF is the data modeling protocol that utilizes the advanced data networking features of Grafana. The NETCONF goes through periodically updating new addresses and requirements related to the specification and interface of the periodic survey.

NETCONF is now working as a network configuration for protocol development in the Juniper networks. NETCONF can be used for configuring, monitoring, telemetry, and encoding network protocols. It is also used to periodically survey a Juniper device, recover interface traffic counters, and store them in the InfluxDB time-series database. The protocol now supports a limited arrangement of interface measurements: bytes sent, bytes received, parcels received for each interface.

People use NETCONF to accumulate telemetry from the device, this should work with any Juniper device including SRX firewalls, MX, PTX, and ACX switches, EX, QFX, and OCX switches, including virtual devices, for example, the vSRX virtual firewall and the vMX virtual router. We just tried with vSRX.

Key Takeaways

1. Grafana can help visualize various metrics related to Juniper networks, including CPU, memory, and more, making network monitoring more accessible and insightful.
2. NETCONF is highlighted as a protocol for configuring, monitoring, and gathering telemetry data from Juniper devices, including interface measurements.
3. Google Protocol Buffers (GPB) are used to serialize data in Juniper Networks, facilitating distributed data processing.
4. InfluxDB is recommended for handling time-series data, especially for data-intensive applications, due to its strong ecosystem and integration with Grafana.
5. PyEZ is mentioned as a tool to access Junos OS devices with a NETCONF interface.

Stream push of line queue and latency using Google Protocol Buffer (GPB)

An open and extensible information model is the character of Juniper Networks. Data is produced as Google protocol buffers (GPB) organized messages. The records that characterize each proto message are distributed on the Juniper Network. Local sensors send out data near the source, for example, the line card or organization preparing unit (NPU), utilizing the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Since this model highlights a circulated design, it is known to be scalable.

Juniper Grafana is implemented by using: Influx as the time-series database, Grafana as a visualization, PyEZ to implement the NETCONF interface to Juniper devices and gather telemetry data such as interface encounters, Google Protocols Buffers (GPB) to deserialize the analytics records streamed by a juniper QFX switch. The vSRX virtual firewall generates the telemetry data.

Influx as the time series database

A time-series monitoring tool is especially important to deal with data-intensive applications. When data is generated in real time from sources like sensors, networks, and applications, monitoring live data can help you understand the latest status of your resources.

Among the real-time data types, time-series data will let you understand the trend of your system. InfluxDB can give you such capabilities and time-series data monitoring. The major benefits of InfluxDB include:

• It never starts from the beginning but gets you to the point where you left.
• It has a strong ecosystem with its 200 telegraph plugins and integration with Grafana.
• The Influx community makes constant improvements and supports users by backing InfluxDB and Telegraph projects.

PyEz to access NETCONF

PyEZ enables you to connect with the devices running Junos OS having a NETCONF Interface. The only thing you need to do is to use a serial console connection when you are physically connected to the device’s console port. You can also access the NETCONF server using SSH. 

Google Protocol Buffers

Google Protocol Buffers or GPB is a free and open-source cross-stage library that can be used to serialize data. Protocol buffers are an alternative to data-centric C++ classes and their structures that could impose difficulty when it comes to interoperability with other languages.

Visualizing NETCONF poll data

You can visualize NETCONF poll data with Grafana. To do so, try the steps below.

• Click on the little green bar in the first row, select “Add Panel” in the menu, and then “Graph”.
• In the graph row, click on “no title”.
• Then click on “Metrics” and click “Grafana” on the right bottom. Then, select “network” as the data source.
• Remove the 2nd and 3rd series by clicking the “x” button on the right.
• Click on “Back on the dashboard” click on the “floppy disk” option at the top and save it on the dashboard.

Grafana as a Service by MetricFire

Our fully hosted version of Grafana gives you the long-term storage of your data with technical support. If you are new to Grafana, try to sign up for a free trial now.

• Go to Grafana as a Service on the MetricFire website.
• If you want to create a new dashboard, click on the Plus button on the left-side corner of the dropdown. Select Dashboard and then click on Add panel on the right top side to add a visualization to the dashboard.
• To add the metric graph, click on “Choose Visualization” to open the graph editor. From there, you become able to edit your graph metrics. You can also apply the various functions by updating and designing your metric graphs with our various functional features.
• If you want to zoom out the graph and text, use the time range controls. You can also set an auto-refresh rate to have your graph update automatically.
• To get access to quick row controls, click on the left sides of each row of a little green rectangle.
• You can also drag and drop the screen by moving the cursor of your mouse around the screen. Also, you can click the drag and drop options by making it easy to adjust both height and width.
• If you want to give the name of your document then click on the cog option and go to settings. You can also organize your document by various features and save the document by clicking on the floppy disk option.
• Click on the Home dropdown and choose your previously saved dashboards. You can also use the search function to filter the results.
• You can toggle the side menu by clicking the Hosted Graphite Icon placed at the top left corner. This gives you access to your documentation and previous dashboard records.

You can try setting up your first Grafana dashboard by signing up. You can also take a look at our demo page and talk to us directly to further discuss your experience with your trial.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about monitoring Juniper networks with Grafana. With Grafana as a Service, you don’t have to worry about setting up and maintaining your own infrastructure. With MetricFire’s hosted option, you can now more effectively monitor the Jupiter network in Grafana's dashboards. With Grafana-as-a-Service, you can surface metrics using data from diverse sources and share your dashboards with your colleagues. As Grafana provides intuitive visuals for time-series data, it will especially be powerful to monitor your network infrastructures.