Data Collector quickstart guide

The preferred method of capturing and transferring your data to Capacity Planner is by using the Data Collector application. It is deployed within your network and controls the compression and transfer of files from your organization to the ITRS data centre, while maintaining an audit trail of all activity.

This guide takes you through all the tasks that you can perform using the Data Collector. If you are looking to installing the for the first time, see Install and set up Data Collector.

Note that when extracting data from cloud providers, Capacity Planner the data collectors are run from the environment using secure read-only credentials provided by the customer. This avoids unnecessary network transfer, the need to upgrade and maintain on-premise data collectors, and ensures that data collection is always at the most up-to-date release.

Collection Manager interface Copied

The Collection Manager is the main control panel for the Data Collector. Using Collection Manager, you can:

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The main panel of Collection Manager displays the task collection list with details of all the tasks that are currently available.

When you select a task, the following options become available for this task:

When you right-click a task in the list, you can select from the following actions:

Log in to the Capacity Planner API Copied

In order to run collection tasks, you must first log in to the Capacity Planner API.

  1. From the menu bar, select Settings > Configure Link to Capacity Planner or click the padlock in the bottom-leftcorner of the Collection Manager.
  2. Enter the username and password for the API that was provided to you by ITRS .
  3. If you are using a proxy server to access the API, select the Use proxy server check box to open the Proxy settings tab.
    • Fill in the required values.
    • To use your current Windows username and password, select the Use default credentials.

If a connection is not currently available, use the Offline mode. This allows you to create, edit, and run new collection tasks but no data will be uploaded until you log on to the API.

After successfully logging in, all projects available to you will be displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the Collection Manager window.

Note that API login can only be used with one Data Collector instance. If it is used with more than one, then all the other Data Collector instances will be logged off. If you need to run more than one , ask to provide an API login for each .

Refresh encryption keys Copied

You can regenerate the encryption keys used for storing sensitive data and for encrypting communications between the Data Collector and the API.

To do it, go to Settings > Refresh keys.

Add AWS credentials Copied

To store the Access IDs and Secret Access Keys for accessing AWS, create AWS credentials.

There must be at least one set of AWS credentials stored in order to create an AWS collection task.

To add AWS credentials:

  1. Click from the application menu bar.
  2. Click Manage credentials.
  3. In the Manage AWS Credentials window, click Add and fill in the form:

Fill in the form to add credentials:

AWS credentials can also be added directly from the AWS collection task editor.

Any new credentials entered here are encrypted and stored securely on the device that the Data Collector is installed on.

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Collection tasks Copied

Collection tasks provide data from different systems. This data is then sent to and displayed in the sunburst.

All your existing collection tasks are displayed in the main Collection Manager window. From here, you can edit them and create new tasks. For more information on creating, editing and running collection tasks, see Collection tasks.

Log files Copied

After the Data Collector completes a collection, it uploads the log files to the API. No sensitive data is written to these files, and they are used purely for analysis.

Log files are currently not administered by the application and can use up disk space. It is recommended to routinely delete log files to free up disk space. Log files are written to a Logs folder, typically C:\Program Files\ITRS\Capacity Planner Data\Logs. To see all log files, click View Logs at the bottom left hand side of the Collection Manager window.

["Capacity Planner"] ["Capacity Planner > Data Collector"] ["User Guide", "Quickstart Guide"]

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