Integrating with Microsoft SCOM

Microsoft SCOM provides infrastructure monitoring that is flexible and cost-effective, helps ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications, and offers comprehensive monitoring for your datacenter and cloud, both private and public. 

After you configure an integration with Microsoft SCOM, you can get the event, metric, and topology data from Microsoft SCOM in BMC Helix Operations Management and BMC Helix Discovery respectively, and you can process the data further in BMC Helix AIOps to derive actionable insights.

For example, the following figure shows the events received in BMC Helix Operations Management:

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to integrate with Microsoft SCOM.

Before you begin

1. Obtain the egress IP of your tenant by requesting BMC Support.
2. Create a firewall rule to allow traffic from the egress IP to the Microsoft SCOM host on the listening port. The default port is 1433.

To integrate with Microsoft SCOM

1. Log on to BMC Helix Portal, and click Launch on  BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations.

2. On the CONNECTORS tab, click in the SOURCES panel.
3. Click Microsoft SCOM.
4. Specify the source connection details:

   1. Instance Name: Specify a unique instance name. 

      Recommendation

      We recommend that you specify the instance name in the following format: 

      <sourceType>_<sourceControllerServerName>{_<InstanceQualifier>}

      The instance qualifier helps you to distinguish the multiple instances configured from the same source server. For example, you can name your instances as MSSQLSERVER_PROD, MSSQLSERVER_TEST, and so on.

   2. Host and Port: Specify the Microsoft SCOM host name and port number. The default port number is 1433.
   3. User name and Password: Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access the Microsoft SCOM REST API.
   4. Windows Authentication: Select this check box if the user name and password should be authenticated by Windows.
   5. Domain: Specify the authentication domain name if you plan to use the Windows authentication.
   6. Database Name: Specify the Microsoft SCOM database name.
   7. Instance Name: Specify the Microsoft SCOM database instance name.
   8. Connection Timeout: Specify the time, in seconds, after which no attempt should be made to establish a connection. The default value is 30 seconds.
5. Click VALIDATE AND CREATE.
   The specified connection details are validated and the corresponding source connection is created.

6. Select the source connection that you created from the Source Connection list if it is not selected already.
   

   Important

   The destination host connection is created and configured automatically when the source connection is created.

   
   

7. Clear the options for one or more data types for which you don't want to collect data. By default, all the options are selected.
   
   • MS SCOM Events (JDBC Pull)
   • MS SCOM Metrics (JDBC Pull)
   • MS SCOM Topology (JDBC Pull)

8. Configure the collectors for the selected data types by clicking the respective data type in the Collectors section. Specify the parameters for the selected data type, as explained in the following table:

   Parameter Name	Data Type
   	MS SCOM Events (JDBC Pull)	MS SCOM Metrics (JDBC Pull)	MS SCOM Topology (JDBC Pull)
   Collection Schedule Specify the data collection frequency in minutes.	Applicable BMC recommendation: 5 minutes	Applicable BMC recommendation: 5 minutes	Applicable BMC recommendation: 60 minutes
   Data Collection Window Specify the historical period (in minutes) from the current time during which the data should be collected from Microsoft SCOM.	Applicable BMC recommendation: 5 minutes	Applicable BMC recommendation: 5 minutes	Applicable BMC recommendation: 60 minutes
   Data Latency Specify the time (in minutes) for which the data time window should be placed far back on the timeline.	Applicable	Applicable	Applicable
   Category Select All or a subset of categories from the list. This list of categories is updated automatically from Microsoft SCOM.	Applicable	Applicable	Not applicable
   Severity Select one or more event severities from the list.	Applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable
   Priority Select one or more event priorities from the list.	Applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable
   State Select one or more event states from the list.	Applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable
   ManagementPack Select a management pack. The metrics specified will be part of this management pack.	Not applicable	Applicable	Applicable

9. Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.
10. Configure the distributors for the selected data types by clicking the respective data type in the Distributors section. Specify the parameters for the selected data type, as explained in the following table:
    

    Parameter Name	Default
    Max Batching Size Specify the maximum number of records to send in a single POST to the destination API. The batch size depends on the destination’s ability to buffer the incoming data.	250
    Max Batching Delay Specify the maximum time to wait before building a batch and processing.	3 seconds
    Base Retry Delay Specify the initial delay time (that means, for 2 seconds, the retries would proceed 2, 4, 8, 16, ... seconds later.)	2 seconds
    Max Intra-Retry Delay Specify the hard limit for the above retry delay. For example, if set to 60 seconds, retries would be performed again 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 32, 32... seconds later.	60 seconds
    Max Retry Duration Specify the total time for retrying delivery.  For REST destinations, a delivery is a batch of events in one REST POST request.  For example, if set to 8 hours, then requests would be made based on the above settings for 2+4+8+16+32+32+32... until 8 hours in total duration is reached, then no subsequent attempts are made to retry sending the data. The assumption here is that if there is an outage or other issue with the destination tool, then recovery will take less than "Max Retry Duration" to complete.	5 minutes

11. Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the selected data types.
12. Click one of the following buttons:
    • SAVE STREAM: Click if you want to edit the integration details before creating the connector. After you save the stream, the connector that you just created is listed in the SOURCES panel. Move the slider to the right to start the data stream.
    • SAVE AND START STREAM: Click if you want to save the integration details and start receiving the data immediately.

           For more information about the data streams, see Starting or stopping data streams.

To validate the integration

Perform the following actions to validate the integration:

• Data streams: Ensure that the status of the data streams is up and running, indicated by moving blue and red arrows:
  
  • A moving dark blue arrow () indicates that event data is being streamed. 
  • A moving red arrow () indicates that metric data is being streamed. 
  • A moving light blue arrow () indicates that topology data is being streamed. 

• Events: From BMC Helix Operations Management, go to Monitoring > Events to ensure that you can see the events in BMC Helix Operations Management.
  For more information, see  Event monitoring .
• Metrics: From BMC Helix Operations Management, go to Monitoring > Devices and perform the following steps to ensure that you can see the metrics in BMC Helix Operations Management:
  
  1. Click the links for the required device.
  2. On the Monitors tab, click the required monitor.
     You should see the metrics graph on the Performance Overview tab.
     For more information, see Viewing collected data . 
• Topology: From BMC Helix Discovery, go to Explore > Data, and then click <count> Import Records in the Miscellaneous section to ensure that you can see the CI records from the source (host) in BMC Helix Discovery. Use these records further to create a Business Service model for the source. For more information, see Creating a model .