Orbit osquery
Orbit is Fleet's osquery runtime and autoupdater. With Orbit, it's easy to deploy osquery, manage configurations, and stay up to date. Orbit eases the deployment of osquery connected with a Fleet server, and is a (near) drop-in replacement for osquery in a variety of deployment scenarios.
Capabilities
| Capability | Status |
|---|---|
| Secure autoupdate for osquery | ✅ |
| Secure autoupdate for Orbit | ✅ |
| Full osquery flag customization | ✅ |
Package tooling for macOS .pkg |
✅ |
Package tooling for Linux .deb |
✅ |
Package tooling for Linux .rpm |
🔜 |
Package tooling for Windows .msi |
🔜 |
| Manage/update osquery extensions | 🔜 |
| Manage cgroups for Linux performance | 🔜 |
Usage
TODO
Packaging
TODO
FAQs
How does Orbit compare with Kolide Launcher?
Orbit is inspired by the success of Kolide Launcher, and approaches a similar problem domain with new strategies informed by the challenges encountered in real world deployments.
- Both Orbit and Launcher use The Update Framework specification for managing updates. Orbit utilizes the official go-tuf library, while Launcher has it's own implementation of the specification.
- Orbit can be deployed as a (near) drop-in replacement for osquery, supporting full customization of the osquery flags. Launcher heavily manages the osquery flags making deployment outside of Fleet or Kolide's SaaS difficult.
- Orbit prefers the battle-tested plugins of osquery. Orbit uses the built-in logging, configuration, and live query plugins, while Launcher uses custom implementations.
- Orbit prefers the built-in osquery remote APIs. Launcher utilizes a custom gRPC API that has led to issues with character encoding, load balancers/proxies, and request size limits.
- Orbit encourages use of the osquery performance Watchdog, while Launcher disables the Watchdog.
Additionally, Orbit aims to tackle problems out of scope for Launcher:
- Configure updates via release channels, providing more granular control over agent versioning.
- Support for deploying and updating osquery extensions (🔜).
- Manage osquery versions and startup flags from a remote (Fleet) server (🔜).
- Further control of osquery performance via cgroups (🔜).
Is Orbit Free?
Yes! Orbit is licensed under an MIT license and all uses are encouraged.
Community
Chat
Please join us in the #fleet channel on osquery Slack.
