Entity object

The Entity object describes an individual entity. You can create a standalone entity or stitch an entity into a larger supply chain topology by using relationships such as hostedOn or partOf. An entity can include specific metrics.

An entity that you create can have one of two functions in your Turbonomic supply chain:

  • Topology Entity

    The entity that you create exists in the topology, and displays as a member of the supply chain. For example, assume that you want to create a business application and then create services that are members of that business application. You create these entities as Topology Entities.

  • Proxy Entity

    The entity that you create serves as a placeholder in the topology data you are creating. You can assign metrics to this entity or add relationships to make it part of some other entity. You also specify the matchIdentifiers relationship to map this entity to an entity that exists in the environment. The match identifier is the IP address of the corresponding entity.

    When Turbonomic loads the topology, it moves your metric and relationship data from the topology file into the matched entity. The proxy entity does not appear in the Turbonomic supply chain, but the metric and relationship declarations appear in the user interface for the matched entity.

The Entity object includes the following properties:

Name Type Description
type Required, string The following values are valid:
uniqueId Required, string This property identifies the custom entity among all other instances of that entity in your topology. Because the ID must be globally unique, use naming conventions that express a namespace for the topology segment that you are creating.
name Required, string This property specifies a meaningful display name for the entity. This display name is not required to be unique.
matchIdentifiers Optional, object This object contains the IP address of the entity that you want to match, as follows: 
{
    "ipAddress" : "11.22.33.44"
}
If you specify matchIdentifiers, then this entity is a Proxy entity. You specify the IP address of the entity that you want to modify. Then Turbonomic applies the metrics or the partOf specification from this proxy entity to the matching entity.
hostedOn Optional, object This object specifies the entity that is a host or provider for another entity. This object contains the following properties:
  • (Required) hostEntityType: This property specifies an array of possible entity types. The probe starts with the first entity type in the list, and checks for a matching UUID or IP address. It uses the first one to succeed. This array can contain the strings, container and virtualMachine.
  • (Optional) hostUuid This property is the unique identifier for the host. This ID can be the UUID that you declared for some other entity in your topology. Alternatively, you can use the Turbonomic REST API to get the UUID of a specific entity in the environment. If you provide a UUID, you do not need to provide an IP address.
  • (Optional) ipAddress This property specifies the IP address of a host entity in your environment. If you provide an IP address, you do not need to provide a UUID for the entity.
partOf Required, array of objects This property specifies an array of entities that contains this entity. For example, one business application can contain multiple service and transaction entities. The business application would be the container or parent entity. Your entity can be contained by more than one parent. The objects that are members of this array identify the entity type and the UUID of the parent, as follows: 
{
    "entityType": "businessApplication",
    "ipAddress" : "11.22.33.44"
}
The entity type can be one of:
  • businessApplication: a Business Application entity
  • businessTransaction: a Transaction entity
  • service: a Service entity
  • databaseServer: a Database Server entity
  • application: an Application Component entity
metrics Optional, array of metricsEntry objects This property specifies a list of Metric Entry objects that define metrics and values for this entity. See Metrics Entry Object.