OmniAgent

Overview

OmniAgent is the host-level execution component of vuSmartMaps that enables automated discovery, inventory synchronization, telemetry collection, monitoring, and instrumentation as part of the Auto Discovery & Instrumentation (ADI) framework. Installed on target systems, OmniAgent serves as the execution layer between the vuSmartMaps platform and monitored hosts by continuously discovering supported infrastructure and application components, managing monitoring probes, collecting observability data, and executing monitoring tasks defined by the platform.

Within the ADI framework, OmniAgent works in coordination with the vuSmartMaps platform to automatically discover hosts and supported application components, synchronize discovered information with the centralized inventory, classify discovered entities, and initiate monitoring based on centrally configured onboarding policies. The platform manages discovery, onboarding, instrumentation, and monitoring policies, while OmniAgent executes these policies locally on each monitored host. This centralized approach ensures consistent monitoring across environments while significantly reducing manual onboarding and operational effort.

When enabled, OmniAgent continuously performs discovery scans, synchronizes discovered information with the platform, and keeps the Host Landscape inventory updated with infrastructure and application changes. The platform evaluates discovered entities against the configured onboarding policies and automatically provisions monitoring where applicable. When ADI is disabled, hosts and application components are not automatically discovered, inventoried, onboarded, or monitored through the ADI framework.

During each discovery cycle, OmniAgent identifies supported infrastructure and application components by collecting information about the operating system, running processes, application servers, runtime technologies, databases, messaging systems, network communication, listening ports, log locations, and metrics collection endpoints. The discovered information is securely transmitted to the vuSmartMaps platform, where it is processed to maintain an accurate and continuously updated inventory of monitored resources. Continuous discovery also enables the platform to detect newly deployed services, infrastructure changes, and application updates without requiring manual inventory maintenance.

Based on the discovered components and the monitoring policies associated with the selected Environment and Host Group, OmniAgent automatically deploys, configures, and manages the appropriate monitoring probes required for telemetry collection. Depending on the detected technology and configured monitoring policies, the platform can automatically enable metrics collection, log collection, distributed tracing, and other supported observability capabilities. The current ADI implementation supports automatic discovery and monitoring of several technologies, including Apache Tomcat, JBoss/WildFly, Apache HTTP Server, IBM App Connect Enterprise (IBM ACE), IBM MQ, and other supported infrastructure and application components. Support for additional technologies, operating systems, telemetry types, and deployment environments continues to expand in subsequent releases.

OmniAgent manages the complete lifecycle of monitoring probes running on the host. It downloads, deploys, configures, starts, updates, and continuously monitors probes required for each discovered component while verifying probe health and operational status. If communication failures or probe issues occur, OmniAgent automatically performs recovery operations to restore monitoring and ensure reliable telemetry collection with minimal administrative intervention.

OmniAgent securely communicates with the vuSmartMaps platform to perform the following functions:

• Register and onboard monitored hosts.
• Discover supported infrastructure and application components.
• Synchronize discovered information with the centralized inventory.
• Receive centrally managed discovery, onboarding, and monitoring configurations.
• Deploy, configure, update, and manage monitoring probes.
• Automatically initiate monitoring for supported components based on configured onboarding policies.
• Collect metrics, logs, traces, and other supported telemetry data.
• Report discovery status, probe health, and monitoring status to the platform.
• Support automated discovery, inventory synchronization, onboarding, monitoring, and instrumentation workflows.

By serving as the execution layer within the ADI framework, OmniAgent enables policy-driven discovery, inventory management, monitoring, and instrumentation across supported environments. Continuous communication between OmniAgent and the vuSmartMaps platform ensures that infrastructure and application components remain accurately discovered, inventoried, monitored, and managed throughout their lifecycle, providing organizations with a scalable and automated approach to observability while significantly reducing the manual effort required to onboard and maintain monitoring across dynamic environments.

tip

Think of OmniAgent as the execution engine running on every monitored host. While the vuSmartMaps platform centrally manages discovery policies, inventory, onboarding decisions, and monitoring configurations, OmniAgent executes those instructions locally by discovering supported infrastructure and application components, deploying and managing monitoring probes, collecting telemetry, and continuously reporting discovery and monitoring status back to the platform.

Supported Discovery Technologies

OmniAgent supports automatic discovery of a wide range of infrastructure components and application technologies. Depending on the installed software and operating system, the agent can identify supported runtimes and services for automatic monitoring.

The following categories are currently supported:

Category	Supported Technologies
JVM Applications	Spring Boot, Apache Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic, JBoss, IBM WebSphere
Web Servers	Apache HTTP Server, NGINX, IIS
Databases	PostgreSQL, Oracle Database, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB
Integration Platforms	IBM ACE
Messaging Systems	IBM MQ, Kafka
Runtime Technologies	Java, .NET, Python, Go, Node.js
Infrastructure	Physical Servers, Virtual Machines, Linux Hosts, Windows Hosts

Support for additional technologies is introduced in subsequent product releases as new discovery capabilities become available.

Supported Platforms, Components, and Telemetry

OmniAgent currently supports automatic discovery and monitoring for supported Linux-based components.Depending on the component being monitored, OmniAgent can automatically provision:

• Metrics
• Logs
• Traces

Support for additional operating systems, application runtimes, telemetry types, and deployment environments is introduced as platform capabilities continue to evolve.

Why OmniAgent is Required

• OmniAgent serves as the execution layer of the Auto Discovery Instrumentation (ADI) framework. It enables automated host discovery, probe deployment, telemetry collection, configuration synchronization, and health monitoring without requiring manual intervention on individual hosts.
• By centralizing monitoring orchestration in the platform and delegating execution to OmniAgent, organizations can onboard and manage large-scale environments consistently and efficiently.

When to Use OmniAgent

Deploy OmniAgent when you need to:

• Onboard servers into ADI monitoring.
• Automatically discover hosts and entities.
• Deploy and manage monitoring probes.
• Collect infrastructure telemetry.
• Manage monitoring configurations centrally.
• Enable automated observability workflows.
• Reduce manual monitoring setup activities.
• Standardize monitoring across environments

OmniAgent is designed to support a growing set of application and infrastructure technologies. While the currently supported capabilities focus on supported Linux-based components, additional operating systems, runtimes, telemetry types, and deployment environments are introduced as platform capabilities expand.

OmniAgent Architecture Overview

The OmniAgent architecture explains how vuSmartMaps enables automated discovery, configuration, and monitoring of hosts using the Auto Discovery Instrumentation (ADI) framework. It follows a platform-driven model where the vuSmartMaps platform defines monitoring behavior, and OmniAgent executes those instructions on each host.

vuSmartMaps Platform Layer

This layer provides centralized orchestration, configuration, and monitoring through the Host Landscape interface Please refer to DataStudio > Host Landscape.

• Host Landscape (ADI UI): Serves as the primary interface to view hosts, entities, OmniAgent health, probe status, and monitoring lifecycle.
• Monitoring Configuration & Policies: Define what needs to be monitored across environments and host groups. These configurations are applied automatically to discovered hosts.
• OmniAgent Control Module: Sends configuration updates to agents and receives host status, probe health, and monitoring state information.

Control & Communication Layer

This layer represents the secure communication channel between the platform and OmniAgent running on each host.

• Configuration Updates: Monitoring configurations and policies are pushed from the platform to OmniAgent.
• Heartbeats & Health Updates: OmniAgent continuously sends status updates, including host availability and probe health.
• Telemetry Flow: Data collected by probes is sent to the vuSmartMaps platform for processing, analysis, and visualization.

Target Host Layer

Each monitored host runs OmniAgent, which executes monitoring tasks locally.

• OmniAgent (Execution Layer): Receives configurations from the platform and manages the execution of monitoring tasks. It ensures probes are running correctly and handles recovery in case of failures.
• Probes: Lightweight components responsible for collecting specific telemetry such as system metrics, logs, or service-level data.

OmniAgent Role and Responsibilities

OmniAgent acts as the execution layer within the Auto Discovery Instrumentation (ADI) framework, responsible for carrying out monitoring and data collection tasks on each host. It operates based on configurations and policies defined by the vuSmartMaps platform, ensuring consistent and automated observability across environments.

Its primary responsibilities include:

Configuration Management

OmniAgent receives monitoring configurations and policies from the vuSmartMaps platform and applies them locally. These configurations determine which probes should run and what data should be collected.

Discovery Configuration

Discovery behavior within the Auto Discovery & Instrumentation (ADI) framework is centrally managed by the vuSmartMaps platform. Instead of configuring discovery settings individually on every monitored host, administrators define discovery and onboarding behavior within the platform, and the configured policies are automatically distributed to connected OmniAgents. This centralized approach ensures that all monitored hosts follow consistent discovery and monitoring rules while significantly reducing manual configuration effort.

Discovery operates with the minimum permissions required. Permanent sudo access is not required for routine discovery operations. Elevated privileges are requested only when required for supported discovery activities.

During its regular communication with the platform, OmniAgent retrieves the latest discovery configuration and applies it locally. These configurations determine how discovery is performed, what information is collected, and how discovered components are evaluated for monitoring. Any updates made to discovery policies are automatically synchronized with connected OmniAgents, allowing configuration changes to take effect without requiring administrators to manually modify individual hosts.

Depending on the configured discovery policy, the platform can control various aspects of the discovery process, including:

• The infrastructure and application components that should be discovered.
• The types of metadata collected during discovery.
• Discovery and onboarding policies associated with the selected Environment and Host Group.
• Monitoring eligibility for supported technologies.
• Technology-specific discovery behavior for supported application platforms.
• Monitoring configuration associated with discovered entities.
• Automatic instrumentation and telemetry collection for supported components.

By centrally managing discovery configuration, organizations can maintain consistent discovery behavior across large-scale deployments while ensuring that newly deployed hosts and application components are automatically discovered, inventoried, and prepared for monitoring according to the organization's predefined onboarding and monitoring policies.

Probe Lifecycle Management

OmniAgent manages and runs multiple probes on a host, with each probe responsible for collecting metrics, logs, traces, and other supported observability data. It downloads, deploys, configures, starts, updates, and continuously monitors probes while verifying their operational health. If probe failures or communication issues occur, OmniAgent automatically performs recovery operations to restore monitoring and maintain reliable telemetry collection.

Monitoring and Reporting

OmniAgent continuously monitors the health of the host and its probes. It sends regular updates to the platform, including:

• Agent availability and connectivity
• Probe health and status
• Reporting activity and data flow

These updates are reflected in the Host Landscape and OmniAgent tab.

Self-Healing and Recovery

OmniAgent detects failures or inconsistencies in probe execution and attempts recovery actions such as restarting affected probes. This ensures continuity of data collection without requiring manual intervention.

Secure Communication

OmniAgent maintains a secure communication channel with the vuSmartMaps platform to:

• Receive configurations
• Send telemetry data
• Report health and status updates

Access control and authorization are managed at the platform level, while OmniAgent enforces execution of only the configurations it receives.

OmniAgent Communication with Probes

OmniAgent maintains continuous communication with all probes running on a host to ensure reliable data collection and stable monitoring execution. It coordinates probe activity based on configurations received from the vuSmartMaps platform and ensures that probes operate in alignment with the defined monitoring policies.

Heartbeat and Status Updates

Probes periodically send status and heartbeat updates to OmniAgent. OmniAgent aggregates this information and reports it to the platform, enabling visibility into probe health and reporting status within the Host Landscape and OmniAgent tab.

Configuration Synchronization

When monitoring configurations or policies are updated at the platform level, OmniAgent applies the changes to the relevant probes on the host. This ensures that probe behavior remains consistent with the latest configuration. If a configuration update cannot be applied successfully, OmniAgent ensures that probe execution remains stable and continues to report its status for further analysis.

Diagnostics and Error Reporting

OmniAgent monitors probe execution and captures error conditions such as:

• Probe failures
• Startup issues
• Configuration mismatches

These details are reported to the platform, where they are reflected as probe health states and can be used for troubleshooting.

Probe Execution Management

OmniAgent ensures that required probes are running based on the applied configuration. It monitors probe behavior and attempts recovery actions, such as restarting probes, when failures are detected.

note

Probe behavior is primarily driven by platform-defined configurations rather than manual user control.

Discovery Capabilities

OmniAgent continuously discovers supported infrastructure and application components and reports the results to the platform. During each discovery cycle, OmniAgent collects information about the monitored host, including:

• Operating system information
• Host hardware details
• Network interfaces
• Running processes
• Listening ports
• Process communication
• Technology runtime information
• Application server details
• Database services
• Messaging components
• Log file locations
• Metrics collection endpoints

The collected information is securely transmitted to the vuSmartMaps platform where it is processed, classified, and added to the centralized Host Landscape inventory. Only newly discovered information or changes detected during subsequent discovery cycles are synchronized, reducing unnecessary data transfer and minimizing resource utilization.

OmniAgent performs discovery using the minimum permissions required for supported technologies. Administrative privileges are used only when specific discovery operations require elevated system access.

Probes

Probes are lightweight data collection components managed by OmniAgent. Each probe is responsible for collecting specific types of telemetry, such as system metrics, logs, or service-level data, depending on the monitoring configuration applied to the host. Probes operate under the control of OmniAgent and are dynamically managed based on platform-defined policies.

How Probes Are Installed and Managed

Probes are deployed and managed automatically as part of the ADI workflow.

• Deployment: Probes are initiated when monitoring configurations are applied to a host.
• Execution: OmniAgent ensures that required probes are running and reporting data.
• Configuration Updates: Changes in monitoring configuration are automatically applied to probes.
• Recovery Handling: If a probe fails or becomes unresponsive, OmniAgent attempts recovery actions such as restarting the probe.

note

In the ADI model, probe deployment and lifecycle are largely automated and policy-driven.

Resource Management

OmniAgent manages probe execution to ensure stable operation on the host.

• Probes are monitored for resource usage and execution stability
• OmniAgent ensures that probes do not impact overall host performance
• In case of abnormal behavior, recovery actions may be triggered automatically

Probe Health States

Probe health is continuously evaluated and displayed in the OmniAgent tab. The following states may be observed:

• Healthy: Probe is running as expected and actively reporting data
• Unhealthy: Probe is running but experiencing issues or degraded performance
• Not Reporting: Probe is not sending data to the platform

Status vs Health

• Health indicates the operational condition of the probe
• Status indicates whether the probe is running or stopped

These two indicators together provide a complete view of probe behavior.

Monitoring and Troubleshooting Probes

Users can use the OmniAgent tab to:

• Identify probes that are not reporting
• Detect unhealthy probe behavior
• Correlate probe issues with host-level health
• Take corrective actions where applicable