Best practices when configuring Atrium Integrator

When configuring Atrium Integrator, consider the following best practices:

• Transform your data in such a way that it is easily normalized for commonly used attributes related to domain, memory, disk size and so on.
  For example, the DriveSize attribute for the BMC_Media class should be specified in GB. For more information about attributes, see BMC CMDB  Data Model Help in the PDFs and videos page and the Class Manager.
• Provide data to help reconciliation by ensuring that CI attributes used for identification have unique values and are populated consistently.
• If you need to customize the data mappings in an integration job, familiarize yourself with the Common Data Model so that you can select the appropriate classes and attributes. You can also verify that data types match for the data mappings and plan unique identifying fields. For more information about Common Data Model, see Managing the Common Data Model. 
• Consider bringing in data by chunks and designating separate Atrium Integrator instances for such activity so that, if you have a large amount of data to import, you can spread the import work across multiple instances.
• Do not run more than one Atrium Integrator, Normalization Engine, or Reconciliation Engine job at the same time because they might query or update the same data.
• Map the attributes that the Normalization Engine uses to normalize CIs: Name, ManufacturerName, Model, PatchNumber, and VersionNumber. If you do not map these attributes, the Normalization Engine cannot normalize the CIs.

• When you make customizations, for example, add filters to the out-of-the-box job forms, if you face issues with the performance for these customizations, check the server-side AR API, SQL, and Filter logs. You can access the logs from AR System Management Console > AR System Server Group Console > Logs > View Logs as shown in the following figure:
  

• For issues that occur when you run Reconciliation or Atrium Integrator jobs, for example, jobs that are stuck or reconciliation jobs are queued for a long time, verify the information in the respective job logs and take necessary action. You can view the logs in the following locations:

  Reconciliation logs	(Windows)<AR System installation directory><\ARSystem\Arserver\Db\re> (UNIX)<AR System installation directory></ARSystem/db/re>
  Atrium integrator logs	(Windows) <AR System installation directory><\ARSystem\Arserver\Db> (UNIX) <AR System installation directory></ARSystem/db>

  Important

  If you are BMC Helix Subscriber, you can access the logs in the View Logs page in AR System Management Console. For accessing any other logs, contact BMC Support.

• Make sure that your QA environment is same as the production environment in terms of volume of data and configurations.
• If you change any settings, or make customizations, test the changes in the QA environment. Only after you consistently get the expected results, promote the changes to the production environment.