package metadata

This package is responsible to provide metadata in the right form to be directly sent to the backend. Metadata collection is iterated during Agent execution at different time intervals for different use cases.

Providers

Single metadata providers are defined in the form of insulated sub packages exposing a public method like:

func GetPayload() *Payload

along with their specific Payload definition. Payload formats can be different, that's why metadata providers are not implemented as interfaces. These components should be loosely coupled with the rest of the Agent, this way they can be used as independent go packages in different projects and different environments.

Collectors

Collectors are used by the Agent and are supposed to be run periodically. They are responsible to invoke the relevant Provider, collect all the info needed, fill the appropriate payload and send it to the specific endpoint in the intake. Collectors are allowed to be strongly coupled to the rest of the Agent components because they're not supposed to be used elsewhere. Collectors can be user configurable, except for the host metadata collector that is always scheduled with a default interval.

Notice: For the time being, several providers collect a piece of information that is used in the v5 package to compose a single metadata payload compatible with the one from Agent v.5. This way we can send metadata through the current backend endpoints (see HostCollector and ResourcesCollector), waiting for the new ones to be deployed. At that point, all the subpackages will be required to define a payload with either the new Protobuf format or a custom JSON compatible with the v2 intake API.