Watch what you run. Nothing else.
Sierra Six is monitoring built from selectable integrations. Switch on the hardware, software and applications you actually have. Only those are configured, scheduled and watched.
Situation
Most monitoring arrives as an empty framework or as a platform that assumes you own everything it supports. Either way, somebody spends months writing checks, wiring up alerts and tuning out noise before the first useful page is sent.
Meanwhile the real environment is specific: this wireless controller, that backup product, these storage arrays. What an IT shop needs is monitoring that already knows those products, and ignores everything it does not have.
Mission
Give an IT team working monitoring for the products it owns, by choosing from a catalog instead of building from scratch.
The staff section responsible for communications and information systems. Spoken on the radio: Sierra Six. The people who keep everyone else connected.
Execution
Select
Browse the catalog by category and switch on the integrations that match your environment. Each one states what it monitors and exactly what it needs from you.
Configure
Fill in the settings for your site: addresses, a read-only account, thresholds. Run several instances of the same product side by side. Validation tells you what is missing before anything runs.
Dry run
Try an integration against the real product. It prints what it found and sends nothing.
Schedule
One command schedules exactly what is enabled and removes what is not.
$ sierrasix catalog # everything that can be switched on, by category $ sierrasix info ruckus-smartzone # what it monitors and what it needs from you $ sierrasix enable ruckus-smartzone # adds it to site.yaml with the settings to fill in $ sierrasix validate # checks every enabled integration is fully configured $ sierrasix run ruckus-smartzone --dry-run # try it; prints results, sends nothing $ sierrasix units # schedules exactly what is enabled
What it watches
Network05
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Arista EOS switchesIn developmentArista Networks
Switch health over eAPI: system, environment, power supplies, PoE, interfaces, optics, BGP, MLAG and spanning tree, with per-port history and streaming-telemetry freshness.
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Endpoint reachabilityReady
Checks that TCP ports answer and that web addresses respond, with response time. Works against anything on the network; no vendor API needed.
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Network configuration backupIn development
Versioned running-configuration backups for switches and firewalls, with a ledger of every capture and change.
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sFlow traffic collectorIn development
Collects sampled sFlow and aggregates it into who-talks-to-whom traffic between hosts and services.
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SNMP switchesIn developmentHPE Comware / ProCurve and others
Port status, traffic and sensors for switches polled over SNMP.
Firewalls01
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Fortinet FortiGateIn developmentFortinet
Every FortiGate through FortiManager: health, high availability, VPN tunnels, licences, SD-WAN, WAN links and interfaces.
Wireless02
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Arista CloudVision CUE Wi-FiIn developmentArista Networks
Access point inventory, status and client counts from the CV-CUE cloud service.
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Ruckus SmartZoneReadyRUCKUS Networks
Wi-Fi health from a SmartZone controller: cluster state, access points per zone, WLAN availability and traffic, and client signal quality rolled up by access point and SSID, with detail kept for the weakest clients.
Virtualization03
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Server cabling mapIn development
A per-server map of which network port is cabled to which switch port, compared against a cabling standard.
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VMware guest health (agentless)In developmentVMware
Heartbeat, CPU, memory and disk for virtual machines that cannot run an agent, using VMware Tools data from vCenter.
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VMware vSphereIn developmentVMware
Hosts, datastores, clusters and virtual machines from vCenter, with performance history.
Storage02
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HPE Nimble / Alletra storageIn developmentHewlett Packard Enterprise
Array capacity and hardware health, volume and disk inventory, latency, and snapshot coverage alerts.
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Synology NASIn developmentSynology
CPU, memory, volume and disk health from DSM, plus share availability and backup-age checks.
Backup & disaster recovery02
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NAKIVO Backup & ReplicationIn developmentNAKIVO
Director, repository, transporter and job health, including overdue, stalled and failed backup jobs.
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Zerto disaster recoveryReadyZerto (HPE)
Replication health from each Zerto Virtual Manager: every protection group against its own recovery-point target, journal and failsafe history, recovery-test age, replication appliances, active alerts and licence headroom.
Security04
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CrowdStrike FalconIn developmentCrowdStrike
Sensor coverage and health across servers, and open detections, from the Falcon API.
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Halcyon anti-ransomwareIn developmentHalcyon
Agent state per server combined with assets and alerts from the Halcyon console.
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TLS certificatesIn development
Certificate expiry for named targets and an estate-wide sweep, an inventory of issued certificates, and alerts at expiry milestones.
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Windows session recordingIn development
Indexes screen recordings of administrative sessions on Windows servers, with activity markers, for review.
DNS, DHCP & IPAM01
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Infoblox Universal DDIIn developmentInfoblox
Subnet and range utilisation, on-premises host and service status, and DNS security events from the Cloud Services Portal.
Power & environment02
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AVTECH Room AlertReadyAVTECH
Temperature and switch-sensor readings from AVTECH Room Alert environment monitors, with optional high-temperature alerts.
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UPS and PDUIn developmentAPC, Eaton, Vertiv Liebert
Battery, load, runtime and environment readings from uninterruptible power supplies and power distribution units over SNMP.
Servers & operating systems04
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Business application watchdogIn development
Rolls the Windows services an application depends on into one health result per application, and can keep them running.
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HPE iLOIn developmentHewlett Packard Enterprise
Reachability of each server's management controller and detection of a controller whose address has changed.
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Windows event logsIn development
Aggregates Windows event-log volume by source and severity so trends and spikes are fast to chart.
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Windows patch stalenessIn development
Alerts on Windows servers that have stopped receiving updates.
Service desk01
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ManageEngine ServiceDesk PlusIn developmentManageEngine
Mirrors tickets, changes, problems, tasks and work logs into a local reporting store.
Notifications01
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Microsoft Teams alertsIn developmentMicrosoft
Alert cards in Teams with outage duration, supporting evidence, and acknowledge buttons.
Inventory02
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Decommission lifecycleIn development
When a machine is retired, archives its monitoring history and removes it from monitoring.
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Server inventoryIn development
Operating system, edition and build for every server, with licensing and inventory spreadsheets.
Reporting01
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Availability and service reportsIn development
Uptime, backup protection, security and service-desk reports as a web page and spreadsheets.
Applications04
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Ask the dataIn development
Answers plain-English questions about monitoring data using a local language model.
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Configuration archiveIn development
Lets approved staff download any device's configuration as it was at any point in time.
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Topology and application mapsIn development
A full-stack map of switches, servers, storage and the traffic between them.
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Wall display boardIn development
A wall-mounted display of monitoring status, projects, announcements and staff notices.
“In development” means the integration is on the roadmap and not yet shipping. Product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners; listing an integration does not imply endorsement by or partnership with that vendor.
Sustainment
Stands alone, or joins what you have
A built-in store keeps current state and every state change, with no other software needed. Already running Icinga 2 or InfluxDB 2? Results can go there as well, or instead. It is a per-site choice.
Your site stays yours
Everything specific to one site lives outside the product in /etc/sierrasix. Credentials sit in a separate locked-down secrets file or the environment, never in the main configuration; validation warns if one slips in.
Add your own
An integration is one manifest and one collector. Drop your own under /etc/sierrasix/integrations and it appears in the catalog beside the built-in ones, without modifying the product.
Command & signal
Alerting is built in. Rules decide which problems are announced, to which channels, and how often. The behaviour below needs no configuration at all.
- Silence is an alarm.Every result carries a time-to-live. A collector that dies becomes an alert, not a frozen green light.
- One outage, one alert.While a host is down its services stay quiet. The host alert is the alert.
- No orphan recoveries.A “recovered” message is only sent for a problem that was actually announced.
- Noise has a throttle.Delay an alert until the problem has lasted, cap repeats, or limit a flapping check to one alert per window.
- Acknowledge and mute.Quiet a known problem for a set time, or silence everything during maintenance. Anything still broken afterwards is announced.
notifications: channels: ops: type: teams webhook_url: {secret: teams_webhook} tickets: type: webhook url: "https://helpdesk.example.org/hooks" rules: - name: critical # reminded every 2 hours channels: [ops, tickets] - name: backups # noisy by nature channels: [ops] states: [warning, critical] services: ["Backup*", "Snapshot*"] delay: 15m throttle: 7d repeat: 0
Request a briefing
Sierra Six is in development and available to a small number of early sites. Tell us what you run and we will tell you plainly what is covered today and what is not.