Integrating with SolarWinds NPM

SolarWinds NPM is a software that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues. 

After you configure an integration with SolarWinds NPM, you can get the alert, metric, and topology data from SolarWinds NPM 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. Although SolarWinds NPM separates alerts and events, you can see alerts as events in BMC Helix Operations Management. 

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

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to integrate with SolarWinds NPM.

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 SolarWinds NPM host on the listening port. The default port is 17778.

To integrate with SolarWinds NPM

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 SolarWinds NPM.
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 SolarwindsNPM_Host_PROD, SolarwindsNPM_Host_TEST, and so on.

   2. Host and Port: Specify the SolarWinds NPM host name and port number.

   3. HTTPS: Ensure that this check box is selected to indicate that you plan to use an https connection to SolarWinds NPM host. 
      

      Caution

      We recommend that you do not select the Allow Unsigned Certificate option in a production environment. You might want to select this to allow unsigned certificates in a test environment. See the SolarWinds NPM documentation to learn how to install SSL certificates.

      
      

   4. Max Connections: Specify the number of maximum concurrent REST API requests that should be executed during a collection schedule. The default value is 5.
   5. User Name and Password: Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access SolarWinds NPM REST API.
   6. Connection Timeout: Specify the time, in seconds, after which no attempt should be made to establish the connection. The default value is 30 seconds.
   7. Proxy: Click Proxy, and provide the following details:
      1. Uses Proxy: Select this check box if you plan to configure a proxy server.
      2. Proxy Host and Proxy Port: Specify the host name and port number of the proxy server. The default port number is 8888.
5. Click VALIDATE AND CREATE.
   The specified connection details are validated and the corresponding source connection is created in the Source Connection list.

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

   Important

   The destination host connection is created and configured automatically for each tenant 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.
   • SolarWinds Alerts
   • SolarWinds Metrics
   • SolarWinds Topology

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
   	SolarWinds Alerts	SolarWinds Metrics	SolarWinds NPM Topology
   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 SolarWinds NPM.	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 BMC recommendation: 5 Minutes	Applicable
   Alert Severities Select one or more of the the alert severities from the list.	Applicable  List of alert severities Information Warning Critical Serious Notice	Not applicable	Not applicable
   Alert Categories Select one or more of the the alert categories from the list.	Applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable
   Groups Select all nodes or a specific subset of node groups from the list. This list of node groups is updated automatically from SolarWinds NPM.	Not applicable	Applicable	Not 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 button:
    • 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 .