Use Cases#

For those starting fresh, EmELand often appears to be a confusing set of resource definitions and relationships. But how to generate actual benefits is not obvious.

The following use cases are intended not only to provide examples how to use the data held within the model, but also to document the useful workflows that already have been implemented.

System Structure Documentation.#

The desired structure of a large IT system complex is written manually as System, Component, and API resources, in order to describe the intended system.

Any running components and open interfaces are mapped to ComponentInstance and ApiInstance respectively, holding markers (e.g. annotations) of which Component or API they are an instance of. SystemInstances are either derived implicitly (e.g. through Helm chart releases) or explicitly through manually written resources.

Any missing association between these resources is marked as a Finding and reported to the developers of the IT system via the Web UI.

Certificate Status from TLS Endpoints#

If you manage your TLS certificates with a management solution like cert-manager, it is easy to track the remaining validity by reading the tracking Kubernetes resources. They hold status information on every managed certificate and even provide ready-made integrations with prometheus and grafana to make overdue certificates very obvious. Under normal circumstances, the managed software will renew certificates in a timely manner, so that they never run out of validity period.

But in a real environment, especially at the infrastructure level, there are very often certificates that cannot be tracked automatically. Reasons include legacy software or even hardware appliances, external services that do not provide the required interfaces as well as integrations that just have not happened yet.

In order to ensure that these certificates are tracked as well, EmELand uses its tracking of API endpoints to gather data on certificates. These are then analyzed for their validity period.

Tracking Error Budget of Services.#

(Work in Progress)