Managing Edge Nodes

If you have an Enterprise or Standard license, you can click the Manage tab in the left nav to open the Manage Fleets page. This page has three upper tabs: Fleets, Edge Nodes and Mappings.

Fleets Tab

The Manage Fleets page provides a list of all configured Fleets and Subfleets in the instance.

The top header now shows you the number of configured Fleets (2), along with other statistics. Clicking on the Fleet’s Name redirects you to its Fleet Landing Page where you can explore more information for each of your configured Edge Nodes.

Edge Nodes Tab

The Edge Nodes tab on the Manage Edge Nodes page provides status information for each Edge Node in the selected Fleet.

To export the list of Edge Nodes, click the Export list as drop-down. Select JSON or CSV as the export file format. If you filter the list before exporting, the exported list will also be filtered. You can export the entire list by removing all filters.
To display additional details and controls, click each row.
To teleport from the Leader into the Edge Node, click the Edge Node GUID link.

Add/Update Edge Nodes

You can use the Add/Update Edge Node control at upper right to update an existing Node, or to add a new Node by generating a bootstrap script. Cribl Edge admins can use the UI to concatenate and copy/paste the bootstrap script, automating several steps below. You can use an adjacent option to grab a script that updates an Edge Node’s Fleet assignment. You also have the option of generating a bootstrap script for the following Edge Nodes:

Docker: For details, see Running in a Docker Container.
Kubernetes: For details, see Deploying via Kubernetes.
Linux: For details, see Installing Cribl Edge on Linux.
Windows: For details, see Installing Cribl Edge on Windows.

The Update option in the UI adjusts the Leader connection details for the currently installed software. To upgrade the Edge Node – that is, install a newer version of the software – see Upgrading.

Add/Bootstrap a New Edge Node

The details below differ slightly depending on which deployment option you select.

From Cribl Edges’s top nav, select Manage > Edge Nodes.
On the resulting Edge Nodes tab, click Add/Update Edge Node at the upper right.
Select the deployment option as shown in the composite screenshots below.
In the resulting modal, the Install package location defaults to Cribl CDN. If desired, change this to Download URL.
As needed, correct the target Fleet, as well as the Leader hostname/IP (URI).
As needed, correct the User to run Cribl as. Defaults to cribl.
As needed, correct the Installation directory. Defaults to /opt/cribl.
Optionally, add Tags that you can use for filtering and grouping in Cribl Edge. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.
Copy the resulting script to your clipboard.
Click either Done or X to close the modal.

Paste the script onto your Edge Node’s command line and execute it, to add the Edge Node.

Generating a script to bootstrap an Edge Node on Linux

Below is a composite screenshot of adding an Edge Node on Windows.

Generating a script to bootstrap an Edge Node on Windows

Cribl Edge 4.7.2 and newer includes a Powershell-specific bootstrap script.
The provided Cribl Edge bootstrap command might not work directly in PowerShell due to unescaped quotes in the APPLICATIONROOTDIRECTORY variable. When running the bootstrap command in PowerShell, escape the double quotes within the APPLICATIONROOTDIRECTORY variable. Use backticks as escape characters.

Troubleshooting the Display

If you see unexpected results on the Edge Nodes tab, keep in mind that:

Edge Nodes that miss 5 heartbeats, or whose connections have closed for more than 30 seconds, will be removed from the list.
For a newly created Fleet, the Config Version column can show an indefinitely spinning progress spinner for that Fleet. This happens because the Edge Nodes are polling for a config bundle that has not yet been deployed. To resolve this, click the Deploy option to force a deploy.
For details on collocating multiple Cribl products, see Cribl Edge and Cribl Stream on the Same Host.
For details on overriding default ports, see Overriding Default Ports.

Mappings Tab

Click the Mappings tab (Manage Mappings page) to display status and controls for the active Mapping Ruleset.

To manage and preview the Rules in a Ruleset, click into it.

How Do Edge Nodes and Leader Work Together

The Leader Node has two primary roles:

Serves as a central location for Edge Nodes’ operational metrics. The Leader ships with a monitoring console that has a number of dashboards, covering almost every operational aspect of the deployment.
Serves as a central location for authoring, validating, deploying, and synchronizing configurations across Fleets.

Network Port Requirements (Defaults)

UI access to Leader Node: TCP 9000.
Edge Node to Leader Node: TCP 4200. Used for Heartbeat/Metrics/Leader requests/notifications to clients (for example: live captures, teleporting, status updates, config bundle notifications, and so on).
Edge Node to Leader Node: HTTPS 4200. Used for config bundle downloads.

Leader/Edge Node Communication

Edge Nodes will periodically (every 10 seconds) send a heartbeat to the Leader. This heartbeat includes information about themselves, and a set of current system metrics. The heartbeat payload includes facts – such as hostname, IP address, GUID, tags, environment variables, current software/configuration version, etc. – that the Leader tracks with the connection.

When an Edge Node checks in with the Leader:

It sends a heartbeat to Leader with “facts” about itself.
The Leader uses Edge Node’s facts and Mapping Rules to map it to a Fleet.
The Edge Node pulls its Fleet’s updated configuration bundle, if necessary.

Edge Nodes that don’t maintain their connection to the Leader will eventually disappear from the Edge Nodes page.

The Leader is unaware of Edge Nodes’ platforms (i.e, Linux or Windows) within a Fleet. So the ConfigHelper omits platform-specific limitations. Therefore, when you manage Edge Nodes on heterogeneous platforms, create a Windows-specific Fleet and mapping. See Managing Edge Nodes on Multiple Platforms.

Config Bundle Management

Config bundles are compressed archives of all config files and associated data that an Edge Node needs to operate. The Leader creates bundles upon Deploy, and manages them as follows:

Bundles are wiped clean on startup.
While running, at most 5 bundles per group are kept.
Bundle cleanup is invoked when a new bundle is created.

The Edge Node pulls bundles from the Leader and manages them as follows:

Last 5 bundles and backup files are kept.
At any point in time, all files created in the last 10 minutes are kept.
Bundle cleanup is invoked after a reconfigure.

Managing Edge Nodes

Fleets Tab