EMIR: a configurable hierarchical system for event monitoring and incident response

William T. S. Deich

doi:10.1117/12.2056730

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18 July 2014 EMIR: a configurable hierarchical system for event monitoring and incident response

William T. S. Deich

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Proceedings Volume 9152, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy III; 91521I (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2056730
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2014, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

The Event Monitor and Incident Response system (emir) is a flexible, general-purpose system for monitoring and responding to all aspects of instrument, telescope, and general facility operations, and has been in use at the Automated Planet Finder telescope for two years. Responses to problems can include both passive actions (e.g. generating alerts) and active actions (e.g. modifying system settings). Emir includes a monitor-and-response daemon, plus graphical user interfaces and text-based clients that automatically configure themselves from data supplied at runtime by the daemon. The daemon is driven by a configuration file that describes each condition to be monitored, the actions to take when the condition is triggered, and how the conditions are aggregated into hierarchical groups of conditions. Emir has been implemented for the Keck Task Library (KTL) keyword-based systems used at Keck and Lick Observatories, but can be readily adapted to many event-driven architectures. This paper discusses the design and implementation of Emir , and the challenges in balancing the competing demands for simplicity, flexibility, power, and extensibility. Emir ’s design lends itself well to multiple purposes, and in addition to its core monitor and response functions, it provides an effective framework for computing running statistics, aggregate values, and summary state values from the primitive state data generated by other subsystems, and even for creating quick-and-dirty control loops for simple systems.

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William T. S. Deich "EMIR: a configurable hierarchical system for event monitoring and incident response", Proc. SPIE 9152, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy III, 91521I (18 July 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2056730

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