Monitoring hosts by using Insights

You can use Insights to diagnose systems and downtime related to security exploits, performance degradation, and stability failures. You can use the Insights dashboard to quickly identify key risks to stability, security, and performance. You can sort by category, view details of the impact and resolution, and then determine what systems are affected.

To use Insights to monitor hosts that you manage with orcharhino, you must first install Insights on your hosts and register your hosts with Insights.

For new orcharhino hosts, you can install and configure Insights during host registration to orcharhino. For more information, see Registering Hosts by Using Global Registration.

For hosts already registered to orcharhino, you can install and configure Insights on your hosts by using an Ansible role. For more information, see Deploying insights by using the ansible role.

Red Hat Insights is now called Red Hat Lightspeed. For more information, see Red Hat Insights is now Red Hat Lightspeed.
Additional information

  • To view the logs for all plugins, go to /var/log/foreman/production.log.

  • If you have problems connecting to Insights, ensure that your certificates are up-to-date. Refresh your subscription manifest to update your certificates.

  • You can change the default schedule for running insights-client by configuring insights-client.timer on a host.

Installing Red Hat Cloud plugin

Install the Red Hat Cloud plugin to generate and upload reports from orcharhino to your Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Procedure

  1. Install the Red Hat Cloud plugin on your orcharhino Server:

    $ orcharhino-installer --enable-foreman-plugin-rh-cloud

  2. Optional: In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Administer > About and select the Plugins tab to verify the installation of the Red Hat Cloud plugin.

Access to information from Insights in orcharhino

You can access the additional information available for hosts from Insights in the following places in the orcharhino management UI:

  • Navigate to Insights > Recommendations where the vertical ellipsis next to the Remediate button provides a View in Insights link to the general recommendations page. On each recommendation line, the vertical ellipsis provides a View in Insights link to the recommendation rule, and, if one is available for that recommendation, a Knowledgebase article link.

  • For additional information, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts. If the host has recommendations listed, click on the number of recommendations. On the Insights tab, the vertical ellipsis next to the Remediate button provides a Go To orcharhino Insights page link to information for the system, and a View in Insights link to host details on the console.

Excluding hosts from rh-cloud and insights-client reports

You can set the host_registration_insights parameter to False to omit rh-cloud and insights-client reports. orcharhino will exclude the hosts from rh-cloud reports and block insights-client from uploading a report to the cloud.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Host > All Hosts.

  2. Select any host for which you want to change the value.

  3. On the Parameters tab, click on the edit button of host_registration_insights.

  4. Set the value to False.

If you set the parameter to false on a host that is already reported on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, it will be still removed automatically from the inventory. However, this process can take some time to complete.

Additional resources

Enabling RH Cloud and Insights client reports on hosts

You can enable the Insights client on hosts and have orcharhino upload hosts inventory to the Insights service in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Insights is a service by Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts. Ensure to set this parameter for Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts only. If you set the parameter on any non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems, orcharhino automatically uploads new reports to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console when enabled in RH Cloud orcharhino settings.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Host > Provisioning Setup > Operating Systems.

  2. Select any Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems for which you want to change the value.

  3. On the Parameters tab, add the host_registration_insights parameter, select the boolean type, and set the value to True.

  4. Click Submit to save the parameter.

Additional resources

Obfuscating hostnames and IP addresses

You can use orcharhino to obfuscate hostnames and IP addresses when uploading host data to Insights. Obfuscation ensures that sensitive identifying information is not exposed. When obfuscation settings are enabled, orcharhino obfuscates hostnames and IP addresses. If obfuscation settings are enabled and the host has its own insights-client obfuscation settings, orcharhino honors the host settings. If obfuscation settings are disabled, orcharhino does not obfuscate hostnames or IP addresses unless the client has obfuscation enabled in insights-client.

By default, orcharhino applies global obfuscation settings unless an insights-client on the host overrides the settings with its own configuration. This procedure describes how orcharhino applies obfuscation settings.

Prerequisites

  • Your hosts have insights-client installed and configured.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Enable the Obfuscate host names and Obfuscate host ipv4 addresses settings to obfuscate host names and ipv4 addresses sent to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Verification

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. In the Organization dropdown menu, select the organization that uploaded the host data.

  3. Click Download report to download the host inventory report from Insights.

  4. Verify that the hostname is randomhostname.example.com and the IP address is obfuscated.

Deploying Insights by using the Ansible role

The RedHatInsights.insights-client Ansible role is used to automate the installation and registration of hosts with Insights. For more information about adding this role to your orcharhino, see Getting Started with Ansible in orcharhino in Configuring hosts by using Ansible.

Procedure

  1. Add the RedHatInsights.insights-client role to the hosts.

    For new hosts, see Creating a Host.

    For existing hosts, see Using Ansible Roles to Automate Repetitive Tasks on Clients in Configuring hosts by using Ansible.

  2. To run the RedHatInsights.insights-client role on your host, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts and click the name of the host that you want to use.

  3. On the host details page, expand the Schedule a job dropdown menu.

  4. Click Run Ansible roles.

Configuring synchronization of Insights recommendations for hosts

You can enable automatic synchronization of the recommendations from Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console that occurs daily by default. If you leave the setting disabled, you can synchronize the recommendations manually.

Procedures

  • To get the recommendations automatically:

    1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

    2. Enable Sync Automatically.

  • To get the recommendations manually:

    1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

    2. On the vertical ellipsis, click Sync Recommendations.

Configuring automatic removal of hosts from the Insights Inventory

When hosts are removed from orcharhino, they can also be removed from the inventory of Insights, either automatically or manually. You can configure automatic removal of hosts from the Insights Inventory during Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console synchronization with orcharhino that occurs daily by default. If you leave the setting disabled, you can still remove the bulk of hosts from the Inventory manually.

If Automatic mismatch deletion is enabled, orcharhino removes any hosts from the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console that are not registered in orcharhino. Enable this setting only when all hosts are registered through orcharhino. If any hosts are registered through other orcharhino instances or directly to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, orcharhino deletes them.

Prerequisites

  • Your user account must have the permission of view_foreman_rh_cloud to view the Inventory Upload page in orcharhino management UI.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Enable the Automatic mismatch deletion setting.

Setting minimal data collection

You can configure orcharhino to use minimal reporting if you want to limit the data sent to Red Hat. You can use minimal reporting to limit the amount of system data sent to the Subscriptions service, which remains active. Other Insights services are disabled because they require installed package data, which minimal reports do not include. Reports are still processed daily during the midnight synchronization cycle.

Minimal reports also exclude hostnames, IP addresses, and installed packages. Therefore, obfuscation and exclusion settings do not apply.

Example of data collected in a minimal report
{
  "report_slice_id": "de92044d-9d77-4895-83c4-a476f5020519",
  "hosts": [
    {
      "account": "123456789",
      "subscription_manager_id": "9fc621b9-08c3-4085-a749-bfed38c3052e",
      "insights_id": "9fc621b9-08c3-4085-a749-bfed38c3052e",
      "bios_uuid": "203F234F-58C7-4237-8DDF-A17A2838A66C",
      "bios_vendor": "SeaBIOS",
      "bios_version": "1.16.1-1.el9",
      "arch": "x86_64",
      "infrastructure_type": "virtual",
      "system_profile": {
        "installed_products": [
          {
            "name": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64",
            "id": "479"
          }
        ],
        "cores_per_socket": 1,
        "system_memory_bytes": 3836579840,
        "number_of_cpus": 1,
        "number_of_sockets": 1
      },
      "cpu_socket(s)": "1"
    }
  ]
}

If you switch to Analytics data collection, orcharhino enables the following settings by default:

  • Obfuscate host names

  • Obfuscate host ipv4 addresses

  • Exclude installed packages

Review and adjust these settings to control what data orcharhino shares.

Prerequisites

  • Your user account has a role that grants the edit_settings permission.

  • Ensure that you delete existing data in Insights Inventory before switching to minimal reporting. To remove existing data of a system, navigate to Inventory > Systems in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, select the system, and click Delete.

  • You have selected an organization and location.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Select the Minimal data collection setting from the dropdown menu under Settings.

  3. When you select this option, orcharhino also updates the corresponding setting on the Insights tab under Administer > Settings.

  4. Click the Generate and upload report button to create a new inventory report and send it to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Creating an Insights remediation plan for hosts

With orcharhino, you can create a Insights remediation plan and run the plan on orcharhino hosts.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

  2. On the Insights page, select the number of recommendations that you want to include in a Insights plan.

    You can only select the recommendations that have an associated playbook.

  3. Click Remediate.

  4. In the Remediation Summary window, you can select the Resolutions to apply. Use the Filter field to search for specific keywords.

  5. Click Remediate.

  6. In the Job Invocation page, do not change the contents of precompleted fields.

  7. Optional. For more advanced configuration of the Remote Execution Job, click Show Advanced Fields.

  8. Select the Type of query you require.

  9. Select the Schedule you require.

  10. Click Submit.

Alternatively:

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts.

  2. Select a host.

  3. On the Host details page, click Recommendations.

  4. On the Insights page, select the number of recommendations you want to include in the Insights plan and proceed as before.

In the Jobs window, you can view the progress of your plan.

The text and illustrations on this page are licensed by ATIX AG under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International ("CC BY-SA 4.0") license. This page also contains text from the official Foreman documentation which uses the same license ("CC BY-SA 4.0").