Understand Sensor Precedence
Paragon Insights allows you to add multiple sensors per rule that can be applied to all the devices in a device group. In earlier releases, you could add only one sensor per rule. Each sensor generates data in a field table. If you add the different sensors in multiple rules, it results in as many field tables as the number of rules. When you add multiple types of sensors (such as OpenConfig or Native GPB) in a single rule in Paragon Insights, data from the sensors is consolidated in a single field table that is simpler to export or to visualize. The GUI for multiple sensor will be implemented in subsequent releases.
The following scenarios illustrate use cases for multiple sensors in a rule:
In Paragon Pathfinder, there can be different native sensors that provide non-overlapping counter details for Segment Routing (SR) and Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) label switched paths (LSP). If the field table needs to be combined for the data collected from the LSPs, multiple sensors can be made active for a device in the same rule.
If you want to get data for ge interface using iAgent sensor and for fe interface using Native GPB sensor, then you could use multiple active sensor for a device. You need to ensure non-overlapping data in this case by using Field filtering expression to filter by the interface name. Instead of interfaces, an sp-admin or a user with create access privilege can consider any other key performance indicators too.
Paragon Insights also supports a feature that can be used with multiple sensors, called sensor precedence.
To make data collection from a sensor effective, devices in a device group must support a particular sensor as an ingest method. Select devices in a device group running an older version of operating system, devices from different vendors in a device group, or different products from the same vendor (such as EX, MX, and PTX routers from Juniper) are all scenarios that can cause challenges while applying a sensor to a device group. In such cases, you need to set a different sensor that is compatible with specific devices in a device group.
Paragon Insights enables you to set sensor precedence so that you can configure different sensors in each hierarchy of Rule Properties such as vendor name, operating system, product name, platform, and release version. This makes it possible to apply suitable sensors on multi-vendor devices in a heterogeneous device group. You can configure sensor precedence only through Paragon Insights CLI. The GUI for multiple sensor will be implemented in subsequent releases.
Figure 1 illustrates two rules each with multiple sensors. It is assumed that Rule Properties is configured for sensor precedence.
Let us suppose Sensor1 in Rule 1 is OpenConfig and Sensor4 in Rule 2 is iAgent and Device1 runs Junos operating system (OS). If OpenConfig and iAgent were set as default sensors for Junos OS hierarchy in Rule Properties then, Device1 would receive data from Sensor1 and Sensor4 when the Playbook is deployed for the device group.