Setting up the NIOS Grid

To connect the Data Connector on-prem host to NIOS, you must register it with the Infoblox Grid and configure certain NIOS parameters before it can collect data from the Grid, as well as forward output files to a supported destination. You can register only one Data Connector with a Grid if you configure the NIOS Reporting Server as a destination in a traffic flow.

If your Grid is running NIOS 7.3.x or 8.3.x, you might not be able to collect RPZ hits data from NIOS. Infoblox supports NIOS 8.4.x for RPZ hits data transfer.

To reduce data transfer between the Grid, Data Connector, and the destinations, enable the NIOS Object Change Tracking feature. When you enable this feature, the appliance tracks the changes that are made to NIOS objects and periodically synchronizes changed objects.

Note that you must configure the NIOS appliance to send syslog messages to an external Data Connector over TCP. By default, the NIOS appliance sends these messages over UDP. To configure the NIOS appliance to send messages over TCP, complete the following:

1. Log in to the Grid Master.
2. From the Grid tab -> select the Grid Manager tab -> Members tab, and then click Grid Properties -> Edit from the Toolbar.
3. In the Grid Properties editor, select the Monitoring tab, select the Log to External Syslog Servers check box, click the Add icon, and then specify the IP address of the Data Connector VM.
4. Select Secure TCP or TCP as the Transport option. For more information about syslog, refer to the /wiki/spaces/nios84/overview.