Using BMC Defender Server applications

The previous section presented the basic BMC Defender Server screens. This section discusses how to use those screens, elaborating on three principal areas of BMC Defender Server functionality, as follows:

• Data collection and archiving—BMC Defender Server stores message data in organized modules that permit processing by scripts and third-party software. This data is held online for up to 500 days. Additionally, the BMC Defender Server system can archive data in compressed format for more than 10 years (5,000 days).
• Interactive data browsing—BMC Defender Server provides a suite of web-based screens, including an indexed search engine that permits users to browse data. In particular, the search engine makes it simple to locate information by device, facility, severity, or message keywords.
• Correlation and automated actions—BMC Defender Server provides methods to take action when specific messages occur, such as relaying specific messages to other syslog servers, network managers via SNMP, or running specialized programs to update databases and perform other notifications. The BMC Defender Server provides out-of-box utilities, as well as an easy API to permit construction of other automation tools.

The preceding topics are the focus of this section, that is useful to end-users and operators, as well as system managers and developers.

This section provides information about the following topics:

• BMC Defender Server services and processes
• Syslog process overview
• Syslog file naming conventions
• Relocating the syslog log directory
• Changing the syslog UDP port configuration file
• Enabling syslog TCP reception
• Catalog information
• Keyword Index screen
• Managed device identification
• Device Associated URLs and extra tabs
• Dashboard screens
• Graphs screen
• Data catalogs
• Deleting a catalog item
• Regenerating a catalog
• Message Filters, Overrides, and Configuration screens
• Incoming message filters
• Aux Message Files
• Message overrides
• Configuring network forwarders to send messages to a remote server (version 5.9.02)
• Message forwarding
• Configuring network listeners to receive messages from a remote server (version 5.9.02)
• Data archiving functions
• Encrypting data archives
• Restoring archive files
• Data archiving message digest functions
• Archiving filtered data
• Change audit capability