Technology

BixData is a software suite for managing diverse cluster environments and is specifically designed for environments that include a mix of operating systems as well as commodity and higher-end hardware. BixData is able to manage clusters of 1000, or more, machines running any combination of Operating Systems.

Architecture

BixData consists of various components which are easy to integrate with any complex system and networking environment.

BixAgent

• The low impact agent can be installed on machines where remote management and collection of data is required. Supports many Operating Systems natively.

BixServer

• BixServer monitors network devices and services and serves as an Operational Data Store
• BixServer can reliably monitor HTTP, SMTP, POP3, SNMP and more without requiring BixAgent
• The Operational Data Store supports various SQL servers for storage, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server and ODBC
• BixServer can manage and collect data from BixAgents running on any platforms
• One instance of BixServer supports up to 1000 Agents and is capable of storing 30GB of data per day

BixDesktop

• Advanced user interface for administration, real-time data manipulation and reporting
• Provides a quick and well informed look at the cluster and network environment
• Runs natively on many Operating Systems

Web Reporting Interface

• Provides web browser access to the reporting component of BixServer, as well as the ability to schedule reports

4 Platforms 1 Technology

BixData is designed as large scale distributed software with the focus on being flexible and low impact, as well as easy to deploy. Cross platform means no dependency, a Jack of All Platforms.

All BixData components are built using our own cross platform runtime. This allows BixData to run natively on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, with more planned Operating System support for the near future. BixAgent is compiled and linked statically for different operating systems, with no external dependencies, to maximize the ease of deployment.

BixAgent solves challenges due to different kernel versions and proc file systems by employing a plug-in system, and including different plug-ins that support a multitude of Operating Systems and versions.

BixAgent requires no special security privileges, and can access all monitoring values in read only mode. SMART information can even be gathered by parsing output from a command line utility instead of through the supported native plug-in.

Open Data schemas and Open data storage

Open data exchange is very important to integrate with different environments and software systems, especially in IT. All data schemas and data storage in BixData are in XML format that can easily be integrated into 3rd party applications or accessed directly from the underlying SQL database servers.

Low impact TCP/IP communication and Binary XML

The BixData cross platform runtime includes its own low impact TCP/IP communications library built for performance. BixServer running on a low end Pentium 4 desktop computer can easily balance more than 1000 open connections.

All data exchanged through communications uses an indexed form of Binary XML. This allows the most flexibility for exchanging typed data, as well as high information density when compared with XML.

A number of tests has shown the lower transfer times and higher transfer rates achieved through using Binary XML for data exchange when compared to other forms of semi structured text data or XML.

Most operational data includes a lot of numeric data and storing data values in their original numeric format achieves a 2 or 3 fold reduction in size. CSV is slightly smaller than Binary XML, but includes no type information or data structure.