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Version: 1.2.0

Getting Started: Introduction

Welcome to VirtualMetric DataStream. This section will help you deploy your product and get started using it.

Suite​

DataStream is a telemetry pipeline solution that simplifies data collection, data processing, and data routing for Microsoft Sentinel and other Azure data services. It uses pipelines to process, enrich, and direct data flows to their optimal destinations.

The product suite contains the following applications:

  • Director - see this section for a more detailed description.

    The primary workhorse of our system. It contains the engine that, using a multi-layered configuration setup, ingests massive data from multiple sources, then processes, transforms, and enriches that data based on a very flexible and composable logic, and then routes them in order to forward the processed data to multiple destinations.

  • Agent - see this section for a more detailed description.

    The component that enables completely centralized and unattended management of Directors deployed to thousands of machines. Reconfiguring the data flows streamed on whole slews of machines and multiple networks have never been easier.

Deployment​

Before you proceed, please review our Deployment Models to see your options.

Here, we will use Single Node Deployment—i.e. we will deploy on a single machine as this is the simplest and most straightforward.

We recommend that you keep all VirtualMetric executables in the same directory, preferably named VirtualMetric. You can create that directory in advance:

New-Item -Path "C:\Program Files\VirtualMetric" -ItemType Folder

Throughout the documentation, we will refer to this folder as <vm_root>. With the new architecture, Director and Agent services have separate installation structures:

  • <vm_root>/Director/ - Director installation with full package structure
  • <vm_root>/Agent/ - Agent installation with minimal structure

Once you have created your installation folder, you can deploy the applications.

Downloads​

  • Download and install Director.

    If you chose to deploy manually, make sure to create the following folder structures for the service you're installing:

    New-Item -Path "<vm_root>\Director\config\devices","<vm_root>\Director\config\targets","<vm_root>\Director\config\routes" -ItemType Directory -Force

    With the script-based online installation, this directory tree—as well as other default folders—are created automatically.

  • Download and install Agent.

info

To access the executables from any directory, make sure to add both Director and Agent paths to your $PATH environment variable.

To add only for the current session:

$Env:PATH += ";<vm_root>\Director;<vm_root>\Agent"

To add for all sessions:

  • Open Settings.
  • Go to System > About, scroll down to click the link Advanced system settings.
  • Click the button Environment Variables at the bottom of the dialog box.
  • On the lower pane labelled System variables, click the variable Path.
  • Go to the bottom of the list, and add both paths: <vm_root>\Director and <vm_root>\Agent.
  • Click OK to close the box and apply the updated settings.

Do not forget to close and reopen your terminal.

Next​

After completing the above, you can proceed to the Examples to review various scenarios demonstrating how our powerful applications work.