Moving to this fork - do I need to reinstall the spokes' binaries?

[cookiemonsteruk]

Hello. I am running a hub & spoke setup from the original AnalogJ. The hub is on docker without yaml, only a compose.yaml.
The spokes are a combination of Windows and Linux endpoints with the collector binary pushing to the dock on schedules.
I have read the lanidng page of this project and it clearly says all I need to do is change the image on the hub.
My questin is: especially with all the additional functionality on this fork, do I need also to download from this repo the collector binaires and reinstall them on the end points? . What else do I need to do to make the switch to this fork?
Thanks.

[Starosdev]

Hi @cookiemonsteruk, thanks for the question!

Short answer: Your existing AnalogJ collector binaries will continue to work with this fork's web server for standard SMART monitoring, so no immediate reinstall is required.

The core collector API endpoints (POST /api/devices/register and POST /api/device/:wwn/smart) are fully backward compatible. The fork adds new optional fields to these endpoints, but the server gracefully handles their absence (they default to empty/zero values). Your existing collector.yaml config files also work without changes.

When you WOULD need to update the collector binaries

1. Authentication - If you enable web.auth.enabled: true on the hub, the old collector can't send the required Bearer token. The fork's collector adds api.token config / COLLECTOR_API_TOKEN env var / --api-token flag for this.

2. New features - These are entirely new to the fork and require the fork's collector binaries:

   • ZFS pool monitoring (collector-zfs binary)
   • Performance benchmarking (collector-performance binary)
   • Seagate FARM log collection (requires fork's collector with commands.metrics_farm_enabled: true)
   • Device allowlisting (allow_listed_devices in collector config)

Migration steps

For a minimal migration:

1. Swap the Docker image on the hub -- that's it, your existing collectors will keep working.

For full feature access (recommended when convenient):

1. Swap the Docker image on the hub.
2. Download the latest collector binaries from Releases for each endpoint (Windows and Linux builds are available).
3. Replace the old collector binary on each spoke.
4. Your existing schedules and config files will continue to work as-is.

There's no urgency to update all spokes at once. You can do it gradually since both old and new collectors work against the fork's web server (as long as auth is not enabled).

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions!

[cookiemonsteruk]

Thank you @Starosdev for taking the time to write a comprehensive answer. Much apprecieated. I am clear, much clearer now.