oci-visualizer

Oracle Cloud Infrstructure Visualization Tool

OCI Visualizer

Overview

OCI Visualizer is a tool to visualize an OCI tenancy primarily from a network perspective. The tool was created mainly for the purpose of better understanding the OCI network model. As as a great believer in API first and visualization, I thought that the best way to learn a product is to use the APIs to build a visulation tool.

How it works?

• First visualizer extracts the network data for all VCNs and other cloud resources in an OCI compartment and generates a json data structure . This is done using a Python script leveraging the OCI Python SDK and exposed as a flask REST service.

• Visualize the data generated in step 1 using a small web app, leveraging cystoscape.js , an open source graph visualization framework.

Both the extraction script and the web app run on top of python Flask

installation

1. Install OCI Python SDK as described here

   $ yum install oci-cli $ yum install oci

2. Install flask and flask-cors

   $ pip install flask

   $ pip install flask-cors

3. Update your OCI configuration file with your tenancy details

   Edit your ~/.oci/config file and setup your tenancy details

4. configure the machine firewall If you’re installing on an OCI Oracle linux instance

   $ sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=8000/tcp --permanent $ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

5. Install the OCI Visualizer tool

   $ tar -xvf ociviz-0.1.tar.gz

   This will create a directory called "ociviz-0.1".

   $ cd ociviz-0.1 $ python setup.py develop

6. Launch the flask web server

   $ export FLASK_APP=ocivizserver.py $ flask run --port 8000

7. Launch the visualizer UI

   • Point your browser to http://localhost:8000/ociviz.html .

   • You can use http request parameters to control how Visualizer is launched. the following parameters are available

     • 'proxy' - if you're behind a firewall and need to use a proxy:

     • 'profile' - By default, Visualizer will use the DEFAULT profile on your config file. If you want to use a different profile then provide a profile parameter in the request url.

     • 'mode' -

       'REST': this is thhe default mode. in this mode the netwrok data is retrieved in real time by calling the Python SDK.

       'OFFLINE' : Sometimes a user may not have access the OCI APIs. In such case the tool can be launched with mode=OFFLINE and will visualize the content of the file 'network.json' in the static directory.

       'FILE' : to generate a file that can be viewed OFFLINE. The network file will be generated in the static folder with name "network_.json"

     • 'compartment' - When Visualizer is launched, it will retrieve all compartments in the tenancy defined by your profile. if you want to visualize a spcific compartment then use the compartment request parameter.

     example: http://localhost:8000/ociviz.html?proxy=&profile=&cpmpartment=

8. If you haven't launched Visualizer with a compartmenet parameter, then Select the compartment to visualize. Visualizer will then isse a REST call to the flask server, that runs a python based script to collects all the OCI information required to visualize the compartment. this process might take some time dependeing on the complexity of the compartment

9. What can I do when visualizing a VCN:

   • Click on a node or edge to dy a node or edge properties -
   • Check/unckeck the Routes to show/hide route table based edges
   • Check/unckeck the SecRules to show/ihde edges based on Security rules