Integrating with AWS CloudWatch

Amazon Web Services (AWS) CloudWatch allows you to monitor and track various metrics related to your resources and applications that run on AWS.

Configure an integration with AWS CloudWatch, to view the event and metric data from AWS CloudWatch in BMC Helix Operations Management and derive actionable insights. BMC Helix Operations Management displays alarms as events.

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations collects data for the following namespaces from AWS CloudWatch:

EC2
EFS
ELB
Events
Lambda
Logs
NetworkELB

Editing and deleting integrations

Event deduplication and suppression for reducing event noise

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to configure a connection with AWS CloudWatch, verify the integration, and view the collected event data in various BMC products.

Planning for the connection

Review the following prerequisites to help you plan and configure a connection with AWS CloudWatch.

AWS CloudWatch prerequisites

To collect event and metric data from AWS CloudWatch, the IAM policy that you create must have the minimum permissions as shown in the Action section of the following policy:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "cloudwatch:GetMetric*",
                "events:DescribeRule",
                "health:Describe*",
                "cloudwatch:Describe*",
                "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
                "events:TestEventPattern",
                "events:DescribeEventBus",
                "ec2:Describe*",
                "events:ListRuleNamesByTarget",
                "events:ListRules",
                "events:ListTargetsByRule",
                "aps:*",
                "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers",
                "elasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystems",
                "lambda:List*",
                "lambda:Get*",
                "iam:List*",
                "iam:Get*",
                "logs:Describe*",
                "logs:List*",
                "logs:Get*"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

For the elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers permission, you must grant users the permission to call the Elastic Load Balancing API actions they need. For more information, see Elastic Load Balancing API permissions. Open link

For information about permissions and policies, see Creating IAM policies. Open link

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations prerequisites

Depending on the location (SaaS, on-premises) of the third-party product, choose one or more BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations deployment modes and review the corresponding port requirements. For information about various deployment modes and port requirements, see Deployment scenarios.
Based on the deployment modes, use the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations SaaS deployment or the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway or both. For more information about the gateway, see Deploying the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway.

In the preceding list, third-party product refers to AWS CloudWatch.

To integrate with AWS CloudWatch

In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, on the CONNECTORS tab, click in the SOURCES panel.
Click AWS CloudWatch.
Specify the following details for the source connection:
1. Specify a unique instance name.
2. Specify the access key.
3. Specify the secret key.
4. Select the region.
5. Click Proxy and specify whether you want to configure a proxy server.
  If yes, specify the host name and port number (default value is 8888).
Click VALIDATE AND CREATE.
The specified connection details are validated and the corresponding source connection is created in the Source Connection list.
Select the source connection that you created from the list if it is not selected already.

Important

The destination host connection is created and configured automatically for each tenant when the source connection is created.
Ensure that the options for the datatypes for which you want to collect data are selected.

Click a data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Collectors section as described in the following table:

Parameter Name	Data Type
Parameter Name	AWS CloudWatch Alarms	AWS CloudWatch Metrics
Collection Schedule Specify the data collection frequency (in minutes). Default: 5 minutes Example: Collection Schedule is set to 5 mins. Current time is 00:30. If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected every 5 mins, first at 00:30 and next at 00:35, and so on. For more information about how this parameter affects data collection, see Data collection schedule.	Applicable Default: 5 minutes	Applicable Default: 5 minutes
Data Collection Window Specify the historical time period (in minutes) from the current time for which the data should be collected from Microsoft SCOM. Default: 5 minutes Example: Collection Schedule is set to 5 mins. Data Collection Window is set to 5 mins. Current time is 00:30. If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected first at 00:30 for the interval, 00:25 - 00:30, and next at 00:35 for the interval, 00:30 - 00:35, and so on. For more information about how this parameter affects data collection, see Data collection window.	Applicable Default: 5 minutes	Applicable Default: 5 minutes
Data Latency Specify the time (in minutes) by which the data time window should be shifted back on the timeline. This parameter is useful in delayed data availability situations. Default: 0 minutes Example: Collection Schedule is set to 5 mins. Data Collection Window is set to 10 mins. Data Latency is set to 2 mins. Current time is 00:30. If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected first at 00:30 for the interval, 00:18 to 00:28 and next at 00:35 for the interval, 0:23 to 00:33, and so on. For more information about how this parameter affects data collection, see Data latency.	Applicable Default: 0 minutes	Applicable Default: 0 minutes
Alarm Names Select all or a subset of alarm names.	Applicable	Not Applicable
Namespaces Select all or a subset of namespaces.	Not Applicable	Applicable

Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the event data type.

Click the event data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Distributors section as described in the following table:

Parameter name and description
Max Batching Size Specify the maximum number of data items to send in a single POST request to the destination API. The batch size depends on the destination’s ability to buffer the incoming data. Default: 250
Max Batching Delay Specify the maximum time (in seconds) to wait before building a batch and processing. Default: 3 seconds
Base Retry Delay Specify the initial time (in seconds) for which to wait before retrying to build a batch and processing. The waiting time increases in the following sequence: n¹, n², n³, and so on, where n indicates the number of seconds. Default: 2 seconds Example: Base Retry Delay is set to 2 seconds. Retry is performed after 2, 4, 8, 16, ... seconds.
Max Intra-Retry Delay Specify the maximum limit for the base retry delay. Default: 60 seconds Example: Max Intra-Retry Delay is set to 60 seconds. Base Retry Delay is set to 2 seconds. Retries are performed 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64,... seconds later again.
Max Retry Duration Specify the total time for retrying a delivery. For REST destinations, a delivery is a batch of data items in one POST request. Default: 5 minutes Example: Max Retry Duration is set to 8 hours. Base Retry Delay is set to 2 seconds. Requests are sent for 2+4+8+16+32+64+132... until 8 hours in total duration is reached. After that, no subsequent attempts are made to retry the delivery. The assumption here is that if there is an outage or other issue with the destination tool, recovery should take less than the value of the Max Retry Duration parameter to be completed.

Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the event data type.
Click one of the following buttons:
- SAVE STREAM: Click this button if you want to edit the integration details before creating the instance. After you save the stream, the instance that you created is listed in the SOURCES panel. Move the slider to the right to start the event data stream.
- SAVE AND START STREAM: Click this button if you want to save the integration details and start receiving event data immediately.

To verify the integration

In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, on the SOURCES panel, confirm that the data stream for the integration you created is running. Data streaming is indicated by moving colored arrows.

A moving dark blue arrow () indicates that the event stream is running. Event data will be pushed according to the configured Collection Schedule interval.
A moving red arrow () indicates that the metric stream is running. Metric data will be pushed according to the configured Collection Schedule interval..

To view events in BMC Helix Operations Management

In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Events.
Filter the events by the AWS CloudWatch class.

Incoming events from AWS CloudWatch are processed in BMC Helix Operations Management through a set of deduplication rules to determine whether the incoming event is a duplicate event or a new event. For more information, see Event deduplication and suppression for reducing event noise.

For more information about events, see Monitoring and managing events Open link

To view metrics in BMC Helix Operations Management

In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Devices.
Click the links for the required device.
On the Monitors tab, click the required monitor.
The Performance Overview tab shows the metrics graph. For information about metrics, see Viewing collected data .

To view situations in BMC Helix AIOps

Before you view situations in BMC Helix AIOps, create a Business Service model in BMC Helix Discovery. For information about creating models, see Creating a model Open link .

In BMC Helix AIOps, on the Overview page, view the situations for the event data received from AWS CloudWatch.