AWS Network Recommender

❗️

Deprecated

As of January 2024, the Monte Carlo Data Collector Deployment Model has been deprecated in favor of the Agent and Object Storage Deployment models. Please see Architecture & Deployment Options for more information.

For resources that require network configuration, the CLI can be used to help by analyzing resource and collector configurations and making step-by-step recommendations on how to connect.

To use the Alpha Network Recommender follow these steps -

1. Follow this guide to install and configure the CLI (requires >= 0.15.0).
2. Run the network-recommender command. For reference, see help below:

$ montecarlo discovery network-recommender --help
Usage: montecarlo discovery network-recommender [OPTIONS]

  Alpha network recommender. Attempts to analyze and makes recommendations
  on how to connect a resource with the Data Collector.

Options:
  --resource-identifier TEXT    Identifier for the AWS resource you want to
                                connect the Collector with (e.g. Redshift
                                cluster ID).  [required]

  --resource-type [redshift]    Type of AWS resource.  [required]
  --resource-aws-region TEXT    Override the AWS region where the resource is
                                located. Defaults to the region where the
                                collector is hosted.

  --resource-aws-profile TEXT   Override the AWS profile use by the CLI for
                                the resource. This can be helpful if the
                                resource and collector are in different
                                accounts.

  --collector-aws-profile TEXT  Override the AWS profile use by the CLI for
                                the Collector. This can be helpful if the
                                resource and collector are in different
                                accounts.

  --collector-id UUID           ID for the data collector. To disambiguate
                                accounts with multiple collectors.

  --option-file FILE            Read configuration from FILE.
  --help                        Show this message and exit.

FAQs

Which resource types are supported?
Currently Redshift is supported. Please let us know if you'd like to see any other resources.

What should I use for the resource identifier?
This would be the friendly name or identifier for a resource.

For instance, you can use the describe-clusters command to list all the friendly names for your redshift clusters -

aws redshift describe-clusters --query 'Clusters[*].ClusterIdentifier'

Which collector types are supported?
All hybrid hosted collectors, except those deployed in existing (customer managed) VPCs.

How should I use the recommendations?
After reviewing that the recommendations make sense for your usage / account you can follow the step-by-step instructions generated by the utility.

Importantly, this only connects the data collector with the resource from a network perspective. You still need to onboard by either using the CLI or Dashboard.

What if my resource or collector is not found by the utility?
By default the utility will use AWS profile associated with CLI during setup or the default AWS profile for the session.

To override this behavior use the resource-aws-profile flag for the resource and collector-aws-profile flag for the collector.

This utility also uses the same AWS region as where the collector is hosted by default. Use the resource-aws-region flag to to pick another region.

What should I do if the data collector is unable to connect to the resource during onboarding?
This guide and the network tests can be helpful to debug any issues.