Overview

Synse is a platform which provides a simple HTTP API to monitor and control data center equipment, or more generally - physical and virtual devices. It enables automated and programmatic operation and monitoring of data centers, supporting protocol backends for IT and OT equipment, such as IPMI, I²C, and RS-485. The pluggable backend enables you to gather environmentals, like temperature and humidity, equipment telemetry, like power usage and data throughput, and control building systems like heating/cooling and power.

Synse collects all the data from its backend plugins and presents it to the user in a uniform API, allowing it to become the single source of telemetry and control for devices and equipment using various protocols.

The Synse Ecosystem

There are a number of components that make up the Synse Ecosystem.

Core Components

• vapor-ware/synse-server: An HTTP/WebSocket server providing a uniform API to interact with physical and virtual devices via plugin backends. This can be thought of as the 'front end' for Synse Plugins.

• vapor-ware/synse-sdk: The official SDK (written in Go) for Synse Plugin development.

• vapor-ware/synse-server-grpc: The gRPC API that is used for bidirectional communication between Synse Server and the Synse Plugins.

• vapor-ware/synse-cli: A CLI that allows you to easily interact with Synse Server and Plugins directly from the command line.

Synse Plugins

In addition to the core components listed above, there are a growing collection of open source plugins, extending the capabilities of the Synse platform.

• Emulator: A simple plugin with no hardware dependencies which provides simulated device data. It can be used as a plugin backend for development, testing, getting familiar with Synse, or as a reference for implementing your own plugins.

• SNMP: A plugin that enables SNMP capabilities for the Synse platform.

• IPMI: A plugin that enables basic IPMI functionality, including reading/writing power status and boot target selection.

• Intel AMT: A plugin for communicating with Intel AMT enabled machines.

• Modbus TCP/IP: A basic, general purpose plugin for modbus over TCP/IP.

Plugins for the Synse Platform can be found via the synse-plugin GitHub tag.

Helm Charts

If you are looking to deploy Synse on Kubernetes we provide some Helm charts for Synse Server and some of the Synse plugins. Our charts are actively maintained. As new plugins are developed, they will be added to the chart repo.

You can add our helm chart repo to your local helm server with:

helm repo add synse https://charts.vapor.io

To see the available helm charts, you can check out our chart repo, or search for synse with helm

$ helm search synse
NAME               	CHART VERSION	APP VERSION	DESCRIPTION
synse/synse-server 	0.1.1        	2.2.4      	An HTTP API for the monitoring and control of physical an...
synse/emulator     	0.1.0        	2.2.0      	Emulator plugin for Synse Server.
...