Introduction to the Local Development Environment

Network management is an essential part of any production network, no matter its size. However, organizations often face staff shortages or lack the required resources to properly monitor their network. nmaas (Network Management as a Service) is a GÉANT production service that allows effortless deployment of many open-source network monitoring tools on demand, with minimal initial configuration by the end users. Based on the Kubernetes container orchestrator, and deployable on private infrastructure as well, a dedicated nmaas instance can be used as a central point for monitoring many distributed networks, by utilizing VPN tunnels. New applications can be added to the nmaas catalogue at any time using Helm charts, an industry standard package manager for Kubernetes. nmaas hides the operational complexity from end users who access the service through a web application from where they can manage and configure their existing application instances or deploy new ones.

If you want to follow this tutorial, please make sure that you have either downloaded the pre-prepared VM or have followed the necessary steps for deploying a local Kubernetes cluster and installing an nmaas test instance. After completing these prerequisites, this tutorial continues with setting up a demo network environment, where virtualized demo networking devices are used that can later act as monitoring targets for the applications deployed by nmaas. The process of deploying such monitoring applications from the list of supported applications in the nmaas catalog is described in the part on monitoring the demo network environment. The tutorial is concluded with instructions on adding a custom application, allowing advanced users to add their own applications to the nmaas catalog, thus making it available to all potential users of their nmaas instance.

For users who choose to download the already prepared virtual machine and avoid the whole setup process, the Appendix gives an overview of all the credentials that have been used.