Fix Inventory Worker
Fix Inventory Worker (fixworker) performs all of the collection and cleanup work in Fix Inventory.
A worker is connected to Fix Inventory Core over a websocket connection and simply awaits instructions. By default, it subscribes to the collect and cleanup actions as well as tag tasks.
Fix Inventory Worker loads collector plugins like AWS, Google Cloud, Slack, Onelogin, etc. Only those plugins have knowledge about how to communicate with each cloud, how to collect resources, and how to clean them up.
There can be one or more workers in a Fix Inventory deployment. A single worker can collect many clouds, or you could have multiple workers each collecting one cloud or account.
Once a worker is started, you do not need to interact with it at all. It will simply wait for work and do its job.
somecr.io/someengineering/fixinventoryworker:4.2.0
Usage​
Options​
| Option | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
--subscriber-id <SUBSCRIBER_ID> | Unique subscriber ID | fix.worker |
--psk <PSK> | Pre-shared key | |
--verbose, -v | Verbose logging | |
--quiet | Only log errors | |
--fixcore-uri <FIXCORE_URI> | Fix Inventory Core URI | https://localhost:8900 |
--override CONFIG_OVERRIDE [<CONFIG_OVERRIDE> ...] | Override config attribute(s) | |
--ca-cert <CA_CERT> | Path to custom CA certificate file | |
--cert <CERT> | Path to custom certificate file | |
--cert-key <CERT_KEY> | Path to custom certificate key file | |
--cert-key-pass <CERT_KEY_PASS> | Passphrase for certificate key file | |
--no-verify-certs | Turn off certificate verification |
Environment Variables​
CLI options can also be set via environment variables. The environment variable name is the same as the option name, but in uppercase with the prefix FIXWORKER_ and dashes replaced by underscores.
For example, --fork would become FIXWORKER_FORK=true.
Details​
The following are details on how Fix Inventory Worker works internally and how it integrates with Fix Inventory Core.
Plugins​
Upon start up, Fix Inventory Worker discovers and loads all available collector plugins, which are responsible for collecting resources from a cloud provider.
Actions and Tasks​
Think of actions and tasks like topics and queues in a messaging system. Actions are broadcast to everyone subscribed for that action. A task is always given to exactly one worker that knows how to handle it.
Actions​
When the collect workflow within fixcore is triggered (by either an event or a schedule or because the user manually triggered it), fixcore will broadcast a "start collecting all the cloud accounts you know about" message to all the subscribed workers. Once all the workers finish collecting and sent their graph to the core, the workflow will proceed to the next step which would be plan_cleanup. This one tells anyone interested to start planing their cleanup based on the just collected graph data. Once everyone has planed their cleanup and flagged resources that should get cleaned up with the desired.clean = true flag, the workflow proceeds to the cleanup step which again notifies anyone subscribed to now perform cleanup of those flagged resources. Because the cleaner within Fix Inventory Worker has knowledge of all dependencies in the graph, it will ensure that resources are cleaned up in the right order.
Tasks​
When a plugin or a user decides that a resource tag should be added, changed or removed, e.g. by running
> search id = i-039e06bb2539e5484 | tag update owner lukas
Fix Inventory Core will put this tagging task onto a task queue. This task is then consumed by a Fix Inventory Worker that knows how to perform tagging for that particular resource and its particular cloud and account. In our example above where we are setting the tag owner: lukas for an AWS EC2 instance with ID i-039e06bb2539e5484 the task would be given to a Fix Inventory Worker that knows how to update AWS EC2 instance tags in that resources account.
