Product Overview

Network Architecture Summary

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Overview

Big Brother^® is a simple system and network monitor which produces a web page containing a matrix of test results. These test results are shown as red, green, yellow, purple, clear or blue dots.

A live demo is available at http://demo.bb4.com/bb

1. Components

Big Brother uses a client/server model, and is comprised of the following parts:

BBDISPLAY: The Display Server which processes the status information and creates the BB web pages. Note that a web server such as Apache is needed to view these pages.

BBPAGER: The Paging Server which processes alerts and dispatches them to the correct people. Pages can be sent out by e-mail, SMS, or alpha/numeric pages.

BBNET: The Network Monitor testing routine. Most common network protocols are supported (http/ftp/pop3/etc)

LSM: Local system monitors (bbclients) which collect local system information and send it to the BBDISPLAY and/or BBPAGER if there’s an error.

2. Architecture

Communications: TCP/1984 (Configurable port).

BB communicates from client to server over TCP port 1984, which is registered with the IANA. The server accepts incoming client connections, uses them if valid, drops them if not, does not identify itself on connection or send an ACK of any sort to discourage hackers.

Architecture: Clients send their local system information to the BB servers (BBDISPLAY and BBPAGER) every 5 minutes (configurable). Redundancy is achieved by having BB clients send status messages to multiple BBDISPLAYs and BBPAGERs with failover configuration.

The BBDISPLAYs themselves can be ‘stacked’ in such a way that the output from multiple BBDISPLAYs can be fed to a central BBDISPLAY allowing you cover an entire country, for example.

BBNET tests all listed services for all listed hosts every 5 minutes as well and sends the results to the BB servers. Note that by default BBNET is usually the same machine as the BBDISPLAY.

3. Protocol:

BB messages are simple, sent as text, and can be sent to the BBDISPLAY and BBPAGER using the ‘bb’ command. The format is:

bb 123.123.123.123 “type color machine.test data”

123.123.123.123: IP address of server
type: type of message – status, page, etc
machine.test: machine name, and test column
data: usually the date, plus the error message

Sample: bb 123.123.213.123 “status red bobo.disk 12:00 pm disk full”

In addition, each message is timestamped with an expiration date 30 minutes into the future; this allows BB to tell if the information on the display is valid; if the current time is later than the expiration date, the status color is changed to purple and this generates an alert.

The format for the timestamp is type+NNN, where NNN is the number of minutes the message is valid. For example, status+1440 would generate a status message valid for 1440 minutes (one day).

4. Sizing and Configuration:

We recommend having at most 250 bb clients reporting into a BB server.

In general, BB is quite light and most recent OSs should have no trouble supporting BB out of the box.

Big Brother uses the bb-hosts file to know what to do. The bb-hosts file should be the same on all systems. Configuration information is at: http://demo.bb4.com/bb/help/help/big_brother_unix_help.htm

5. Complex network support:

Big Brother can handle segmented and firewalled networks using the BBRELAY directive, which allows you to route BB messages via one internal BBDISPLAY to another, external BBDISPLAY.

In addition we support point-to-point encryption through the use of shared keys if required.

6. Customization and custom tests

Possibly the greatest strength of Big Brother is its ability to support custom tests in a quick and simple way. These tests can be written in any language.

If you can determine a status of red, yellow, or green, then it can be a BB test. In fact tests you already have running can probably be easily modified by simply adding the bb command (described above) at the end of your test.

The BB display automatically shows new tests when they arrive.

The community site hosts 1000+ scripts, extensions, plug-ins and documentation to enhance and expand the monitor capabilities of Big Brother. The community site is located at:
www.bb4.com/community, or http://www.deadcat.net

If you have any questions please send us an email at bbsales@quest.com or
call us at 949-754-8000.