Overview

Telemetry is a remote data collection technology for monitoring device performance and faults. Telemetry technology uses the gRPC protocol to push data from the network device to a collector in the network management system. As shown in Figure 1, after a gRPC connection is established between the switch and the network management system, the network manager can subscribe to the data information of the specified service module on the switch.

Figure 1. gNMI-gRPC-based Telemetry Technology

PICOS currently only supports dial-in mode of Telemetry technology. In dial-in mode, the switch acts as a gRPC server and the collector acts as a gRPC client. The collector initiates a gRPC connection to the switch and subscribes to the data that needs to be collected.

PICOS Telemetry technology supports Get and Subscribe operations based on gNMI (gRPC Network Management Interface):

• gNMI Get operation: Get the device operating status and operating configuration.
• gNMI Subscribe operation: Subscribe to the data push service to the device, including event-triggered data and periodically sampled data.

gNMI uses gRPC (Google Remote Procedure Call) as its transport protocol.

Configuration Example for gRPC Dial-in Mode

Networking Requirements

Figure 2. gRPC Dial-in Mode Configuration Group Diagram

As shown in Figure 2, the Switch is connected to the Collector as a gRPC server. The Collector is the gRPC client. By configuring gRPC dial-in mode on the Switch, the Collector can subscribe to LLDP events on the Switch.

Configuring the gRPC Server

Before configuring the gRPC server, it is assumed that the IP addresses of both the gRPC server and the gRPC client are properly configured so that the two have valid routes to reach one another. Also make sure the gRPC environment is installed on the gRPC client.

Step 1         Enable gRPC function.   

admin@XorPlus# set protocols grpc enable true

Step 2         (Optional) Configure the listening port number.

admin@XorPlus# set protocols grpc port 10500

Step 3         Commit the configuration.

admin@XorPlus# commit

Verify the Configuration

When an LLDP event occurs on the Switch, the gRPC client successfully receives the subscription information on the switch.