Alpaca Remote 2.1

Alpaca Remote: Concepts Guide

Introduction

Alpaca Remote is a tool that transmits audit logs from a BroadWorks Application Server or access logs from a BroadWorks XSP to the Alpaca Server for processing. Logs are transmitted to the Alpaca Server via REST.

Installation instruction are located here. Configuration instructions are located here.

Authentication Token

Before starting Alpaca Remote, an authentication token will need to be generated for each application server that the remote is configured to read from.

  1. Login to Alpaca with an admin user.
  2. From the "Admin" tab, go to the "BroadWorksClusters" page.
  3. Either click "Add Cluster" to add a new BroadWorksCluster, or click on the cluster from the list to update an existing cluster.
  4. In the "Remote Clients" section, enter the information for each of the servers that the remote is reading from. You need to provide a name (i.e. as1, lab2, xsp1, etc) and the IP address for each server. If Alpaca Remote is not running directly on the server, the IP address that the remote is on must be entered here. Note this field must be the IP of the server and not the hostname.
  5. When done adding servers, make sure to press "Save Changes".
  6. Once saved, the tokens for each application server will be displayed in the Remote Client table. Take note of these as they will be needed to complete the configuration.

License

Alpaca Remote can parse the BroadWorks License and pass it over to the Alpaca Server where it will be stored and used for migration requirements service licensing checks. If not provided, Alpaca will use a default service license that may not be as accurate as your license. The license only needs to be provided for the primary Application Server of each AS cluster.

Audit Logs

If Alpaca Remote is set up on an Application Server, and a valid audit log path has been provided, audit logs will be passed on to Alpaca. This allows monitoring, sorting, and filtering of all audit logs on a system, cluster, service provider, group, device, or user basis.

Access Logs

If Alpaca Remote is set up on an XSP, and a valid access log path has been provided, access logs will be passed to Alpaca. This allows monitoring of devices, specifically when they pull configurations, which can be viewed in the Group level endpoints table. This table can be set to automatically refresh at a chosen interval for easy updates.

CDRs

If Alpaca Remote is set up on an Application Server, and valid CDR path(s) have been provided, cdrs will be passed tp Alpaca. The Alpaca Server will only accept CDRs from the Alpaca Remote if the CDR/Call Reporter module is licensed. Once CDRs have been loaded in Alpaca Server, Call History and Call Summary (Statistics) will be available. Alpaca currently supports CDRs in the CSV format. This option can be verified on the AS_CLI via AS_CLI/Interface/Accounting/BroadWorksCDRInterface/File and the outputFormat option.

Usage

The following commands can be used to control Alpaca Remote:

  • service alpaca-remote start
  • service alpaca-remote stop
  • service alpaca-remote restart

Note that depending on the version of Linux being used, service may be replaced with systemctl, i.e. systemctl start alpaca-remote.