External Data Feed monitoring (EDF)

Last Modified

Wed Sep 28 15:30 GMT 2022

Description

An EDF service is the best option if you want to monitor a device that does not support WMI or SNMP and an N-able N-central agent cannot be installed on it. EDF (External Data Feed) is a small Java Agent that can be used to return the output of a script or application to N-central. N-central then displays the output of the script as if it was a conventional service.

Environment

N-able N-central 9.X and later

Solution

Monitoring

Each piece of data that you intend to have the Windows Agent or Windows Probe report back to N-able N-central is called a metric.

To add a metric to an EDF custom service

  1. In the Data and Thresholds tab, click Add Metric.
  2. In the Configure Metric dialog box, type the Metric name.
  3. From the Data Type drop-down menu, select the appropriate value for the data that is being reported back by the EDF Agent.

  4. Select the Unit if the metric being measured should scale automatically based on the data being collected.

    It is critical that you select the appropriate type of data for a metric. If an inappropriate metric is selected, N-able N-central will not accept the data being reported by the EDF Agent and the service will transition to a Stale state.

  5. Click Save.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where can I download the EDF Agent and samples of EDF code?

A: The EDF SDK (which contains both the EDF agent and sample EDF code) can be downloaded from the N-ableMe:

https://me.n-able.com/s/article/EDF-SDK-Status

Q: When would I use a Unit?

A: Units can be useful if you are measuring the amount of traffic that is passed through a particular NIC. The amount of traffic is reported in bits but you can configure your service to report kilobits, megabits, and gigabits as those units are more user-friendly. For that situation, select Bits from the Unit drop-down menu.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any errors when monitoring EDF based services here is what our support team will need:

  1. Device Name and Customer Site.
  2. Which Service(s) are affected.
  3. Timestamp of the failure.
  4. Error being produced.