pcap-release

BOSH release of the pcap Cloud Foundry add-on.

Disclaimer

As pcap-release is still in active development, information on this page is subject to change and might be outdated.

Description

The goal of this BOSH release is to provide easy access to network traffic data to both Cloud Foundry application developers and CF landscape operators. To achieve this, pcap-release implements CLI-commands to capture tcpdumps (pcap files) from multiple BOSH VMs or CF app-containers in parallel.

Architecture

CF App Capture

• pcap-api is deployed on its own VM.
• pcap-agent is co-located on app-containers.
• pcap-api needs to register its route via route-registrar, part of the cf-routing-release.
• cf-CLI pcap-plugin (TBD/WIP) is used to send capture requests to the pcap-api
• Requests to pcap-api need an authorization header including the OAuth token from UAA. This token is used to gather information about the app from the cloud-controller.
• The pcap-api makes requests to the pcap-agent on corresponding app-container.
• The pcap agent starts a tcpdump using libpcap via the gopacket module and streams the results.

BOSH VM Capture

• pcap-api is deployed on its own VM.
• pcap-agent is co-located on BOSH VMs.
• pcap-api needs to register its route via route-registrar, part of the cf-routing-release.
• pcap-bosh-cli (TBD/WIP) is used to send capture requests to the pcap-api
• Requests to pcap-api need an authorization header including the OAuth token from UAA.
• This token is used to gather information about the target VMs from the BOSH Director
• The pcap-api makes requests to the pcap-agent on corresponding BOSH VMs.
• The pcap agent starts a tcpdump using libpcap via the gopacket module and streams the results.

Jobs

pcap-api

• Check if token is valid by requesting app information from CC/BOSH Director
• Get container address for app instances from CC/BOSH VMs from BOSH Director
• Connect to pcap-agent in app-containers/BOSH VMs
• Stream packets back to client

pcap-agent

• Capture packets and stream back to pcap-api

How to deploy

The release provides two files to integrate with an existing cf-deployment:

• manifests/ops-files/add-pcap-agent.yml This provides a shared CA between pcap-agent and pcap-api. It also adds the pcap-agent job to all diego cells.
• manifests/pcap-api.yml This is an example BOSH manifest to deploy the pcap-api

Step 1 - Add pcap-agent to cf-deployment

bosh interpolate -o manifests/ops-files/add-pcap-agent.yml cf-deployment.yml > cf-deployment-pcap.yml
bosh -d cf deploy cf-deployment-pcap.yml

This assumes your BOSH deployment name of cf-deployment is called cf

Step 2 - Deploy pcap-api

cp manifests/vars-template.yml manifests/vars.yml
vim manifests/vars.yml (adjust as needed)
bosh -d pcap deploy -l manifests/vars.yml manifests/pcap-api.yml

Step 3 - Install CF CLI plugin

wget https://pcap.cf.cfapp.com/cli/pcap-cli-[linux|mac]-amd64 (adjust URL as needed) -O pcap-cli
cf install-plugin pcap-cli
cf pcap ...

Development Deployment for BOSH

# create a dev release, event if there are changes in the git workspace
bosh create-release --force

# upload the release to the BOSH director
bosh -e bosh upload-release

# adjust the release to a dev release instead of the URL
vim manifests/pcap-api.yml
vim manifests/ops-files/add-pcap-agent.yml

# deploy pcap-agent to the desired deployment(s) (example: diego-cells in cf deployment)
bosh -d cf manifest > cf.yml
bosh interpolate -o manifests/ops-files/add-pcap-agent.yml cf.yml > cf-pcap.yml
bosh -d cf deploy cf-pcap.yml

# deploy pcap-api
cp manifests/vars-template.yml manifests/vars.yml
vim manifests/vars.yml (adjust as needed)
bosh -d pcap deploy -l manifests/vars.yml manifests/pcap-api.yml