Introduction

Geant Argus is the (as of 2025) new UI for the NOC Dashboard. It is based on Argus with a number of customizations to implement the specific features that are required by the GEANT NOC.

History

The Norwegian NREN SIKT has developed Argus as a generic incident aggregation system. Incidents from various sources can be ingested into Argus and displayed in a single dashboard. Argus is designed to be source-agnostic, meaning that it can only display generic information about incidents, such as a description or a reference to a ticketing system. In 2024 SIKT was looking to develop a new frontend for Argus. At the same time, GEANT had the ambition of creating a new dashboard user interface. SIKT and GEANT came together to build a new Argus frontend together. There was however, a challenge: GEANT needed extra features and information to be shown that were very specific to Correlator Alarms. SIKT was not in the position to build these features themselves. However, GEANT and SIKT decided to split the effort: SIKT would be responsible for creating the basic UI for displaying alarms/incidents. They would also make sure that the UI is extensible. This allows GEANT to build upon this base layer with the bespoke features that the GEANT NOC required. GEANT calls its final product “Geant Argus”.

Note

Throughout this documentation both Argus and Geant Argus will be mentioned. Argus refers to the SIKT Argus project, while Geant Argus will mean the GEANT specific flavour of Argus

Argus as Django apps

Argus is written in Django, a Python web framework that works with a concept called “(reusable) apps”. A Django App is a collection of files (python modules, html templates) that belongs together and forms a logical piece of functionality. This package can then be distributed on PyPI or other package repositories. An aspect of Apps that is very beneficial to Geant Argus is the possibility to override and extend behaviour of apps. This way the geant_argus app can modify the behaviour of the (various) argus app(s).