Fix warning on graph inventory

[Klaas-]

SUMMARY

I have fixed the warning, it's 30 hours not 30 minutes and also added a sentence about the accuracy expectations of Graph.

ISSUE TYPE

• Bugfix Pull Request

COMPONENT NAME

plugins/inventory/azure_kql.py

[p3ck]

Thanks for the update.

[p3ck]

It is interesting to me that they don't mention any delay in their docs...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/governance/resource-graph/overview#how-resource-graph-is-kept-current

[Klaas-]

@p3ck yeah that was also a complaint of mine in my support cases, but MSFT does not seem to care. You can find hints about the 30 hours limit in some other docs though: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/network-watcher/network-insights-topology :)

[magodo]

Is there a reference to support this part?

[Klaas-]

if you have access to support requests you can check 2406170050002212 -- but no, from my opinion that's not properly documented in the public graph docs, same as the potential 30 hour lag, I've complained about that, but it's nothing MSFT wants to fix apparently

[magodo]

I hope at least you can put some reference about how ARG works and why it can cause these issues, to make the material more sensible.. Otherwise, I don't think anyone will use this inventory.

[Klaas-]

yeah, that's the point I am making, the graph service is not usable for an inventory if you have the expectation that your inventory shows accurate & live data :)

[p3ck]

Yet we have a customer who is using it for inventory. And so far my automated tests have not shown any issues.

[Klaas-]

My guess would be they are not sensitive enough to change. For example the stuff with the powerstate="" in Graph I only noticed because some VMs where not updated in their maintenance windows, but only super rarely. I started to export my inventory to git after each sync in order to see changes, that's when I caught up to the general problems. Sometimes a VM would be in it, sometimes it would not be in it, sometimes a Powerstate was "" instead of the actual powerstate. According to MSFT this is all "by design". If that kind of inventory is okay for a customer they can feel free to use it. But it needs to be with a big warning sign because it's not what an actual inventory should be, which is live & accurate information -- or an error.

[magodo]

If ARG is behaving inproperly and MSFT claimed it was by design, then in what scenario is ARG supposed to be used?

[Klaas-]

@magodo that's actually the same question I posed to MSFT and they failed to come up with an answer :) I am guessing it shall be used to situations where neither accuracy/completeness nor time is an immediate factor. The only answer I came up in my head: statistics over your whole environment when you have thousands of machines and it's not important if there is one or more in the results or if one is powered on or simply "" :D . But at least in my ansible world that's not an option, there are important tasks running that rely on the accuracy of the information.