Step 2: Up and Running

Now that you have installed Paragon Insights and configured at least one device to send telemetry data, it’s time to use the GUI to tell Paragon Insights what to do. We’ll show you how to onboard and group devices together, apply playbooks to get the desired information from the devices, import the telemetry data, and finally, how to visualize and analyze that data.

Onboard Devices

To onboard a device, open a Web browser and log in at https://<ip-of-paragoninsights>:8080 as the admin user with the password that you set earlier.
When you log in, you’ll see the Paragon Insights dashboard that holds several dashlets, and a getting started panel. There won’t be any data in the dashlets, because you haven’t added any devices, device groups, or network groups.
Hover your mouse over the left-side navigation (left-nav) bar and select Configuration > Device when the left-nav bar expands.
On the Device Configuration page, click the add icon (+) to add a device to Paragon Insights.
In the Add Device(s) window that appears, fill in the Name, Hostname/IP address/Range, and Authentication fields as appropriate for your device and network. For authentication, you can use password, SSH, or TLS, as required by your network.
Click SAVE & DEPLOY.
Click OK to close the confirmation window.
The newly added device appears in the list.

Create a Device Group

With Paragon Insights, you need to add all devices to device groups and then define which data is collected by applying rules and playbooks to these device groups.

Here’s how to create a device group and add your devices to it:

From the left-nav bar, select Configuration > Device Group.
The Device Group Configuration page appears. This page is very similar to the Add Device(s) window.
Click the add icon (+) on the Device Group Configuration page.
In the Add Device Group window, give the group a name (for example, DevGrp1).
Select your device from the Devices drop-down list.
Click SAVE & DEPLOY.
Click OK to clear the confirmation window.
The new device group appears in the list.

Apply Playbooks

Paragon Insights comes with several predefined playbooks. Playbooks contain groups of rules for performing specific tasks such as monitoring the key performance indicators (KPIs) of device interfaces or protocol states. Once you apply a playbook to a device group, the devices in the group begin sending data to Paragon Insights.

Here’s how to apply a playbook to a device group:

From the left-nav bar, select Configuration > Playbooks.
The Playbooks page appears.
Click Next to scroll through the alphabetized list of playbooks to locate the interface-kpis-playbook.
Click Apply on the line in the table that starts with interface-kpis-playbook.

The Run Playbook: interface-kpis-playbook window appears.
In the Name of Playbook Instance field, name the playbook (for example, test-playbook-1).
In the Device Group section, select your device group from the drop-down list.
The name of your device appears in the Devices area.
Click Save & Deploy.
Click OK to clear the confirmation window.
Soon, the Status circle (next to the interface-kpis-playbook) turns green, indicating that the playbook is running.

Monitor Device Health

Now that you have a device sending telemetry data to Paragon Insights, let’s have a look at the data.

Select Monitor > Health from the left-nav bar.
The Health page appears.
Click the Device Group button from the Entity Type group of buttons.
The device group you defined earlier is automatically selected as it is the only device group defined.
Select All Devices from the Devices bar.
The Tile View and Table View sections update regularly to show current data from your device.

In the Tile View section, there’s a group of small, colored squares under the heading interface.statistics. Hover your mouse over the small squares, a pop-up shows information about the specific interface on the device.

If you click one of the small squares, the Table View section shows only the data for that interface.

What's Next

Add more devices.
Customize your dashboard to display the data that you care about.
Explore Paragon Insights rules by selecting Configuration > Rules from the left-nav bar.
Create your own playbooks to monitor the things that interest you.