Working in hierarchy mode
When multiple KUMA instances are deployed in various organizations, they may be merged into a hierarchical structure. Interaction between parent and child instances of KUMA (or nodes) provides the following capabilities:
- Child KUMA nodes relay data on other descendant nodes to parent KUMA nodes. This enables the parent node to see its entire branch of the hierarchical tree.
- Parent KUMA nodes receive data on incidents from descendant nodes, and can also receive data on incident-related alerts and events if the corresponding settings are enabled in a child node.
- Child KUMA nodes do not receive information about upstream nodes, except information about their parent KUMA node.
Parent and child nodes interact via API. Authentication relies on self-signed certificates, which the administrators of the parent and child organization must exchange over an encrypted channel when they connect to each other.
One parent node can have more than one child node. A child node can be connected to only one parent node. A parent node cannot be a child node of its descendants.
General administrator users can configure hierarchy mode in the KUMA web interface under Settings → Hierarchy:
- On the Node profile tab, you can configure the profile of your node, create a certificate, and enable or disable hierarchy mode.
- On the Structure tab, you can view your available branch of the hierarchical tree, change the connected nodes, or disconnect them.
- You can connect parent and child nodes on either of these tabs.
Incidents of child nodes can be viewed by users of all roles in the KUMA web interface under Incidents. In incidents, you can obtain information about their related alerts, events, assets, and users.
