Export Manager Overview

Overview

The Export Manager within the Routing Director is designed to streamline the export of operational and observability data to external systems, such as Kafka. By leveraging this functionality, you can enhance your data processing and observability capabilities by integrating Routing Director's data with third-party analytics, monitoring, and logging systems.

Routing Director continuously generates large volumes of operational data, including Underlay and Device KPIs and Syslogs. Without an external streaming mechanism, the generated data remains confined to internal system visibility thereby limiting integration with external monitoring and analysis platforms.

Routing Director addresses this limitation by enabling real-time, controlled data delivery to external Kafka systems. By exporting Routing Director data, you can integrate the data with third-party platforms such as SIEM systems, AI-ML pipelines like third-party anomaly detection, and other event monitoring or data analytics solutions.

The Export Manager page simplifies data export management by consolidating configuration, operational control, and monitoring capabilities into a single platform. You can define Kafka destinations, associate data categories with Kafka topics, and control active data streams.

Routing Director supports streaming of multiple Routing Director operational data types and provides the facility to configure each data type to be exported to different Kafka topics in the external Kafka service from the Export Manager page (Management > Export Manager).

Currently, Routing Director supports only the following categories:

• Device and Underlay KPIs

• Syslogs

Key Components of Export Manager

The following are the key components of Export Manager within Routing Director:

• Destination configuration—A destination represents the external Kafka system where Routing Director data is published. Destination configurations define connectivity and security parameters, including broker addresses, ports, TLS certificates, SASL credentials, and other security settings. Sensitive information, such as authentication credentials, is stored in encrypted form to ensure secure handling of external system access.

• Data streaming configuration—A data stream defines how a specific data category is exported. The streaming rules you configure establishes the association between the data type, the configured destination, and the Kafka topic used for streaming. Each streaming configuration is validated by Routing Director to ensure logical consistency. For example, enabling a stream without specifying a Kafka topic results in a validation error.

Export and Monitor Streams

The following workflow provides a structured process for defining external destinations, creating streaming rules, enabling data publishing, and maintaining reliable, secure, and consistent data export behavior.

1. Define the external destination for data export.

   You begin by configuring where Routing Director should send data. In the Export Manager GUI (Graphical User Interface), create a Kafka destination by entering the Kafka broker addresses, selecting the appropriate security mode (TLS encryption, SASL authentication, or both), and providing authentication credentials as required.

   Once saved, the Kafka destination you configured is available to all future streaming configurations. For more information, see Manage Destination.

2. Configure how Routing Director data should be streamed.

   After the destination is defined, you can create new data streams. You can select the data type you want to export, choose the Kafka destination you created earlier, and specify the Kafka topic that Routing Director should publish to. Each streaming configuration establishes the relationship between the selected data type, the associated destination, and the external Kafka topic. In addition to selecting the data type and Kafka topic, each stream requires enabling or disabling export. For Syslog streams, you must also specify the Syslog Level as part of the configuration. For more information, see Manage Data Streams.

   Note:

   Routing Director does not manage external Kafka infrastructure. Please make sure the required Kafka topics are created and available in your external Kafka environment before configuring them as data streams in Routing Director.

3. Enable streaming to start publishing data.

   When you add and enable a stream, Routing Director begins publishing data to the external Kafka service. It retrieves the relevant data from its internal Kafka topics, processes it through the streaming services, and outputs the processed data to the configured external Kafka topic.

4. Monitor the active stream and update configurations when needed.

   Once streaming is enabled, you must check if the streaming configuration remains healthy and that data continues to flow to the external Kafka system as expected. If any changes are required, such as updating a Kafka topic name, modifying broker settings, or adjusting security parameters, you can edit destination or edit data stream configuration. Routing Director executes the updated configuration and continues to manage all associated metadata to maintain consistent and reliable streaming.

Note:

The exported data can use standard encoding formats such as JSON, UTF-8 strings, or Protobuf. However, Routing Director exports data exclusively in JSON format, which is human‑readable and removes the need for external schema or proto files. This format ensures seamless consumption across external systems.

Benefits

• Facilitates real-time data streaming to external systems like Kafka, enhancing integration with third-party analytics and monitoring tools.

• Centralizes data export management, simplifying configuration and operational control while maintaining system stability.

• Enhances scalability of data processing, allowing organizations to efficiently manage large volumes of routing data.