Unified Catalog¶
The Unified Catalog (Unified Service and Resource Catalog) is the asset management center of Guance, used to centrally store and manage system services, cloud resources, and infrastructure entities within an enterprise. Through automated asset collection, flexible type extension, and visual relationship topology, it helps users build a complete asset lifecycle management system, achieving deep integration between assets and observable data.
Core Capabilities¶
1. Multi-channel Asset Ingestion
Supports four data sources: automatic discovery, DataKit reporting, cloud asset collection, and YAML declaration, covering various entity types such as services, hosts, databases, and cloud resources.
2. Flexible Type Extension
The system predefines five standard entity types: system, service, host, database, and cloud resource, and supports custom extensions to meet personalized enterprise asset management needs.
3. Dynamic Asset Management
The entity list supports dynamic rendering of column definitions by type, custom display fields, one-click CSV export, and provides entity count statistics and quick add capabilities.
4. Relationship Topology Analysis
Builds entity topology based on call chains and dependencies, supporting dual-perspective analysis with dependency view (showing call and containment relationships) and hierarchy view (showing ownership relationships), as well as visual presentation of the full architecture topology.
5. Asset and Observability Linkage
The entity detail page automatically associates observable data such as logs, traces, events, and metrics, enabling quick navigation from asset information to runtime data and fault localization.
Data Sources¶
The Unified Catalog supports four entity data sources, covering automated collection and manual entry scenarios:
| Source Method | Collection Mechanism | Use Cases |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic Discovery | Automatically infers Services and call relationships through APM trace Spans | Service discovery in microservices architectures |
| DataKit Reporting | Directly collected and reported by DataKit Agents deployed on hosts or K8s | Infrastructure onboarding |
| Cloud Asset Collection | Periodically syncs with cloud provider APIs (e.g., AWS, Alibaba Cloud) to obtain metadata for resources like RDS, S3, ECS | Unified management of multi-cloud resources |
| YAML Declaration | Declared via catalog-info.yaml files in code repositories (GitOps) |
Integrated asset management in development workflows |
Features¶
The Unified Catalog includes the following functional modules, supporting end-to-end management from asset entry to relationship analysis:
| Module | Description |
|---|---|
| Entity List | Main asset list, supporting dynamic column display, custom display items, CSV export, entity CRUD operations, and quick add |
| Entity Type Management | Manages predefined and custom types, associates views (built-in views and Explorers) and icon display |
| Panoramic Topology View | Automatically generates a panoramic architecture diagram of entities within the workspace, supporting filtering, grouping, search highlighting, and view saving |
| Entity Details | Side panel displays entity metadata, contact information, external links, relationship topology (dependency/hierarchy), and associated observable data |
Core Concepts¶
Entity¶
The smallest management unit in the Unified Catalog, representing a specific system, service, host, database, or cloud resource instance. Each entity has a unique type identifier and name. The detail page provides access to complete metadata, relationship graphs, and associated observable data.
Entities support two association methods:
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Call Relationship: Represents call dependencies between services, where an upstream entity calls a downstream entity.
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Containment Relationship: Represents hierarchical ownership, where a child entity belongs to a parent entity.
Entity Type¶
A definition template for categorizing entities, determining their attribute fields and display methods. The system predefines standard types such as system, service, host, and database, and supports user-defined extensions. Each type can be configured with unified associated views, including built-in views and Explorers for logs, traces, events, etc.