Setting up a CMDB synchronization connection
This topic provides instructions for configuring synchronization from BMC Helix Discovery to one or more instances of BMC Helix ITSM CMDBs, BMC Helix Remedyforce CMDBs, ServiceNow CMDBs.
Before you begin
Before you can synchronize from BMC Helix Discovery to any instance of a supported CMDB, you must have prepared that CMDB. See one of the following topics:
Note
For a Remedyforce CMDB, you do not have to prepare the CMDB, though you do have to create a connected application in Remedyforce. See the
Remedyforce documentation
for more information.
CMDB sync for on-premises CMDB
It is possible to set up a CMDB sync connection from BMC Helix Discovery to an on-premises installation of CMDB using REST APIs. However, you must consider the following factors before planning to implement it:
- BMC Helix Discovery must be able to make HTTPS requests to an address on the public internet. The address must route through to CMDB’s REST API.
- The most likely way to meet the requirement is to expose CMDB's REST API as a service on an internet-facing load balancer.
- It would be appropriate to register a DNS name for CMDB's REST API, and configure the load balancer to dispatch the requests using the Host header. This minimizes the impact of IP scanners that encounter CMDB's REST API.
- The exact steps to fulfil this requirement depend on how your network is configured and how you control and protect external access to internal systems. These factors are outside of BMC's control and do not involve any BMC products. Your network and security administrators must be involved in this task. They must understand the requirements and the consequences of such a connection.
In a BMC Helix Discovery environment, a connection from an "egress" address is used only for outgoing connections. There are three addresses that can be used for egress from a region, and the same three addresses are used by all BMC Helix Discovery instances in that region. Currently, these IPs are:
| Region | IP addresses |
|---|---|
| AWS – US Oregon |
|
| AWS – EU Ireland |
|
If additional regions are added, these IPs may be expanded upon. If your connection is using a load balancer, these IPs must be allowed.
To configure a CMDB synchronization connection
- Log in to BMC Helix Discovery.
- From the main menu, click the Administration
icon.
The Administration page displays. - From the Model section, click CMDB Sync.
If no CMDB Sync has been configured, a banner displays stating that no CMDB Sync connections are configured. - Click Add CMDB Connection to add and configure a new connection.
- Enter the required details on the Add CMDB Connection page. For more information about the connection details, see Connection details.
- Click Test Connection to verify that the new connection can be reached and the credentials are valid. Testing the connection also retrieves the list of companies from the CMDB for connections other than Remedyforce.
The following image shows creating a connection to a ServiceNow CMDB.
The following image shows a successful connection to a Remedyforce CMDB.
Connection details
Enter the following details on the Add CMDB Connection page.
Connection name
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | The name of the CMDB Sync connection |
Connection Type | The access mechanism to use to connect to the CMDB (for supported versions see, CMDB synchronization):
|
Username | The user name of the CMDB user that is at least a member of a group having the At minimum, the CMDB Demo user permissions are required for multitenancy to work. A user is not permitted to connect to the CMDB from a second IP address within 4 hours of their last activity at the first IP address. For a failover scenario, you could also create a second discovery user to connect from the failover appliance.
|
Password | The password of the CMDB user (or blank if the user has no password) |
Options based on connection type
Common options
| Field | Description | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous Sync | Select the check box to enable continuous sync for this CMDB connection. During continuous CMDB synchronization, whenever BMC Helix Discovery finishes scanning a device, it is added to the synchronization queue. Similarly, whenever a device node is removed due to aging, it is also queued for synchronization, meaning that the deletion is propagated into the CMDB. In this way, the CMDB stays completely synchronized with BMC Helix Discovery. | ||||||||
| Batch Size | Enables you to configure the batch size used for batch operations. If you experience timeouts during a batched operation, most likely during a resync, these may be prevented by setting it to a lower value. You can set the batch size to anything between 1 and 1000. The default is 100. | ||||||||
| Concurrent Workers | Enables you to specify the number of workers used by the CMDB sync process. You can set the number of workers from 1 to 20. The default is 1. The best practice is to start from the default and gradually increase the number up to when sync rate keeps up with discovery rate. | ||||||||
Dataset ID | The ID of the dataset used for Discovery data. The default is | ||||||||
Data Model | The data model for your CMDB. Different versions of the CMDB have different data models, so the data from BMC Helix Discovery must be transformed differently according to the CMDB version. Select the correct data model from the menu. If you select an incorrect value, you might encounter errors during synchronization.
| ||||||||
Multitenancy | Multitenancy support. Selecting this check box enables you to choose a default company name from the drop-down list to assign to a discovery run during an initial scan. The list of companies is not populated until one connection has been successfully tested, or you click Get Companies (which also tests the connection). This section is always displayed. However, if another connection exists, instead of the multitenancy configuration options, a message stating Configure multitenancy from the overview page is displayed along with a link to the CMDB Sync page.
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