Getting Started

Prelude Collector is a streaming network-telemetry agent. It connects to your devices over gNMI, NETCONF, SNMP, or CLI, applies models and mappings you define, and publishes structured data to one or more outputs (NATS, Prometheus, InfluxDB, Kafka, webhooks, or files).

This section takes you from a fresh install to a first successful collection in under an hour. Each page is self-contained and links to the next, so you can stop after configuration if all you need is a running service, or follow through to see real data on the wire.

What you will accomplish

By the end of this section, you will have:

1. A running Prelude Collector instance, reachable on its HTTPS port.
2. A validated configuration file with database, NATS, and storage paths set for your environment.
3. An issued API token, plus a license key if you need more than 20 devices.
4. One configured Device, Protocol, and Subscription.
5. A snapshot containing live data collected from that device.

Reading order

Work through these pages in order on your first install:

1. Installation - obtain and run the collector image or package; sign in with the seeded admin and issue your first API token along the way.
2. Configuration - set the COLLECTOR_* environment for your deployment.
3. Licensing (optional) - run on the free tier (up to 20 devices) or install a license key for more capacity.
4. First Collection - drive the API to bring up your first device and read back a snapshot.
5. Next Steps - pointers into the rest of the documentation once the basics work.

Before you begin

You should be comfortable with:

• Running containers (Docker, Podman, or OCI-compatible runtimes), or managing a systemd-based Linux host.
• Issuing HTTP requests with curl or a similar client.

The Installation page ships a Docker Compose file that brings up the collector along with PostgreSQL and NATS on a single host for evaluation.