Archive for December 2013

Pandora FMS Apache Cassandra Monitoring

Facebook created Cassandra DB to power their Inbox Search feature in 2008, and Twitter announced they would use Cassandra because it can be run on large server clusters and is capable of taking in very large amounts of data in 2010. Nowadays, Cassandra is an Apache top-level project, also knows as Apache Cassandra.
To manage lots of data the importance of monitoring this part of the architecture is increasing. If you use Cassandra, you will want to know how to monitor it.
What is Apache Cassandra?
Apache Cassandra is an open source distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure. Cassandra offers robust support for clusters spanning multiple data centers, with asynchronous masterless replication allowing low latency operations for all clients.
How to collect data
The Cassandra data extraction is being done basically through the execution of commands in the Operative System. The CQLsh client is used to run CQL commands and the general log files of Cassandra are used to retrieve info too.
Parameters that we will retrieve from Cassandra are described below:
  • Cassandra_Process: Displays information on the status of the cassandra process.
  • Cassandra_CPU_Usage: Displays the cpu use for the cassandra process in %.
  • Cassandra_Memory_Use: Displays the memory use for the cassandra process in %.
  • Cassandra_Error_Log_Messages: Displays the amount of error messages in the cassandra log.
  • Cassandra_Warning_Log_Messages: Displays the amount of warning messages in the cassandra log.
  • Cassandra_Network_Connections: Displays the amount of network connections by clients.
  • Cassandra_Thrift_Server_Status: Displays the status of the thrift server.
  • Cassandra_Cluster_Status: Displays the status of the main Cluster.
  • Cassandra_Key_Cache_Size: Displays the size of the key cache in kbs.
  • Cassandra_Active_Commands: Displays the amount of active commands or task being executed.
  • Cassandra_Pending_Commands: Displays the amount of pending commands.
  • Cassandra_Completed_Commands: Displays the amount of completed commands.
  • Cassandra_Active_Responses: Displays the amount of active responses to commands executed by cassandra.
  • Cassandra_Pending_Responses: Displays the amount of pending responses to commands.
  • Cassandra_Completed_Responses: Displays the amount of completed responses to commands.
  • Cassandra_Nodetool_Configuration: Detects if Nodetool is working properly.
Parameters that would influence badly the performance of Cassandra:
  • Cassandra_ReadStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_RequestResponseStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_MutationStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_ReadRepairStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_ReplicateOnWriteStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_GossipStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_AntiEntropy_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_MigrationStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_MemoryMeter_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_MemtablePostFlusher_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_FlushWriter_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_MiscStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_PendingRangeCalculator_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_ReplicateOnWriteStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_Comitlog_archiver_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_InternalResponseStage_Pool_Pending_Tasks
  • Cassandra_HintedHandoff_Pool_Pending_Tasks
To monitor Cassandra, we are going to use Pandora FMS.
This plugin is basically getting data executing commands in the Operative System, analyzing Cassandra's log and executing nodetool (Command line utility included on Cassandra's installation).
This plugin executes the commands and checks all the important values into software agent modules, XML formatted, ready to be sent to Pandora FMS Data Server.
Thus, we can download these prebuilt checks anytime, without having to develop them by ourselves.
With all this data in Pandora FMS, a complete world of possiblities is open up to you: Be warned by mail/sms when something goes wrong with using the alerts system. A complete events list with customizable filter available from your internet browser and even from your mobile device using our mobile apps. Generate on demand or receive periodically complete reports.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Posted by Unknown

How to Become a Digital Forensics Investigator

Digital forensics involves the using the scientific method for investigating and examining information from electronic media so as the information can be used as evidence in the courtroom. Investigating computing devices involves obtaining computer data without compromising it, examining suspect computer facts to figure out the particulars, such as, source and substance, displaying computer based facts to courts, and applying laws to digital findings. Digital forensics investigates data that has been retrieved from a computer's hard drive disk or some other memory media. Digital investigators retrieve data from a working laptop or a computer or its networked locations. The information you retrieve might already be on the hard disk drive, but it is not very easy to find and interpret. In contrast, network forensics yields information about how a perpetrator obtained entry to a computer network.
Education
It will help you to get a computer science degree, however that's not a necessity. You will need to have both professional education and several years of practical experience in the profession. It is helpful to get law enforcement training, nevertheless, that's generally not required. The majority of digital forensics experience is self-taught. The greatest digital forensics experts are insatiably interested in how and why personal computers function. They invest a lot of their hard work studying about software programs, electronics, additionally, they live for the pleasure of knowing the way everything works collectively. Each situation is unique, therefore the solution you wish is probably not in the articles, the discussion boards or CSI. Occasionally, you must experiment with your own well thought-out hypotheses. The capacity to develop insightful investigations as well as persistence to elicit the information is a necessity of an experienced digital forensic examiners. To understand how a file or meta data transforms once an individual performs a certain thing, you'll be ready to confirm when you've verified your hypothesis by skilled testing.
Realities
In the event that you'll be employed for/with law enforcement organizations, you will want a clear conviction record. Although you may only intend to be concerned with civil cases, if you'll be testifying in a courtroom, anything in your history that anyone can use to harm your integrity is going to be grasped upon by the opposite lawyer.
No matter if you begin in the Information Technology area or the law enforcement area, a quality digital forensics expert, you need specific characteristics. Like with all investigative professional, you need an inquisitive character - one which takes you to want to seek and make inquiries and persevere until you finally decide the solutions. To be a successful computer forensics investigator, you ought to be well-organized, because you'll be handling a lot of information but you still have to be capable of recognizing patterns and notice correlations. It is best to have exceptional observation abilities, and be able to notice both the fine details as well as the "big picture". You still need to be unbiased, allowing you to draw conclusions that aren't contingent upon your preconceptions or prejudices. Ultimately, you must be capable of systematically documenting your own investigations and often to be capable of delivering them to other people who don't have your professional understanding. This means you will need equally great writing ability and great language capabilities.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Posted by Unknown

- Copyright © Technology for World -Metrominimalist- Powered by Blogger - Designed by Johanes Djogan -