Agent Comparison

Compare up to 5 Hive agents side by side. Use comparisons to spot configuration drift, verify that servers in the same group have identical package versions, or diff a server's current state against a known-good snapshot.

What You Can Compare

Snapshot Type	What it captures
system_info	OS version, kernel, hostname, uptime, CPU count, memory total
packages	All installed packages and their versions
services	Running services, their status (active/inactive/failed), and startup type
config	Key configuration files (detected automatically based on installed software)
full	Everything above in a single snapshot

Running a Comparison

Comparing Agents Live

Go to Hive → Comparison
Click New Comparison
Select the snapshot type
Pick 2–5 agents to compare
Click Compare

ops0 queries each agent's current state, takes snapshots in parallel, and displays the differences.

Comparing Against a Saved Snapshot

First take a snapshot of the agent's known-good state: Agent → Snapshots → New Snapshot
Later, run a comparison selecting that agent and the snapshot type
ops0 diffs the current state against the saved snapshot

This is useful for:

Verifying nothing changed after a maintenance window
Comparing before and after a deployment
Auditing a server that may have been modified outside your change process

Reading the Comparison

The comparison result shows each agent as a column. Fields that are identical across all agents are shown in a neutral color. Fields that differ are highlighted.

Green — value matches the reference (first agent or saved snapshot) Yellow — value is present but different from the reference Red — value is missing on this agent but present on the reference

Package Diff Example

Package          web-01      web-02      web-03
─────────────────────────────────────────────
nginx            1.24.0      1.24.0      1.22.1  ← drift
openssl          3.0.9       3.0.9       3.0.9
node             20.11.0     20.11.0     ─────   ← missing

Service Diff Example

Service          db-primary  db-replica-1  db-replica-2
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────
postgresql       active      active        inactive  ← problem
pgbouncer        active      active        active
prometheus       active      inactive      active    ← drift

Saving Snapshots

Snapshots capture the state of an agent at a point in time for later comparison.

Go to the agent detail → Snapshots
Click Take Snapshot
Choose the snapshot type
The snapshot is saved with a timestamp

Field	Description
Type	Which aspects were captured
Created	Timestamp
Label	Optional label (e.g. "post-deploy 2024-03-15")

Snapshots can be deleted when no longer needed.

Use Cases

Catch Configuration Drift

Run a weekly comparison across your web tier to ensure all servers have the same nginx version, TLS certificates, and config files.

Post-Deploy Verification

After deploying a package update, compare all nodes to confirm the deployment succeeded uniformly and no servers were missed.

Incident Investigation

A server is behaving differently from its peers. Compare it side-by-side to quickly identify what's different — a missing package, an inactive service, or a changed config file.

Change Verification

Take a snapshot before a maintenance window, make your changes, then diff against the snapshot to verify only the intended changes were made.