Integrating with Microsoft SCOM

As a tenant administrator, it's important that you can monitor the connected systems and quickly identify and resolve any issues. The BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations Microsoft SCOM connector collects events, metrics, and topology data from Microsoft SCOM.

You can view the collected data in various BMC Helix application and derive the following benefits:

BMC Helix application	Type of data collected or viewed	Benefits
BMC Helix Operations Management	Events	Use a centralized event view to monitor and manage events, perform event operations, and filter events. Identify actionable events from a large volume of event data by processing events. For more information, see Monitoring events and reducing event noise.
BMC Helix Operations Management	Metrics	Detect anomalies and eliminate false positives. Use alarm and variate policies to detect anomalies through static and dynamic thresholds. For more information, see Detecting anomalies by using static and dynamic thresholds.
BMC Helix Discovery	Topology	Import all CIs from Microsoft SCOM in BMC Helix Discovery Visualize automatically created service models in BMC Helix Discovery For more information, see Managing your IT infrastructure.
BMC Helix AIOps	Situations (created from events)	Improve the mean time to resolve (MTTR) based on the situation-driven workflow Lower the mean time to detect or discover (MTTD) and the time required for investigating tickets. For more information, see Monitoring situations.
BMC Helix AIOps	Services (created from topology)	Perform root cause analysis of the impacted services. For more information, see Performing causal analysis of impacted services.

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 Microsoft SCOM, verify the connection, and view the collected events, metrics, and topology data in various BMC Helix applications.

Supported version

This connector supports version 2019 of Microsoft SCOM for data collection.

Plan for the connection

Choose the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations deployment mode and review the corresponding port requirements. For information about various deployment modes and port requirements, see Deployment scenarios.
Based on the deployment mode, either use BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations or deploy the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway. For more information, see Deploying the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises gateway.

To configure a connection with Microsoft SCOM

In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, on the CONNECTORS tab, clickin the SOURCES panel.
Click the Microsoft SCOM tile.
Specify the source connection details:
1. 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. Specify the Microsoft SCOM host name and port number (default value is 1433).
3. Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access the Microsoft SCOM REST API.
4. Select the Windows Authentication option if the user name and password should be authenticated by Windows.
5. Specify the authentication domain name if you plan to use the Windows authentication.
6. Specify the Microsoft SCOM database name.
7. Specify the Microsoft SCOM database instance name.
8. Specify the time, in seconds, after which no attempt should be made to establish a connection (default value is 30 seconds).
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 and description	Data type
Parameter name and description	MS SCOM Events (JDBC Pull)	MS SCOM Metrics (JDBC Pull)	MS SCOM Topology (JDBC Pull)
Collection Schedule Specify the data collection frequency (in minutes). Default: 5 minutes for events and metrics collection, 60 minutes for topology collection 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.
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 for events and metrics collection, 60 minutes for topology collection 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.
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.
Category Select All or a subset of categories from the list. This list of categories is updated automatically from Microsoft SCOM.
Severity Select one or more event severities from the list.
Priority Select one or more event priorities from the list.
State Select one or more event states from the list.
ManagementPack Select a management pack. The metrics specified will be part of this management pack.

Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.

Click a 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 selected data types.
Click one of the following buttons:
- SAVE STREAM: Click this button 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 this button if you want to save the integration details and start receiving data immediately.

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

To verify the integration

In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, on the SOURCES panel, confirm that the data streams for the integration you created are 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.
A moving light blue arrow () indicates that the topology stream is running. Topology data will be pushed according to the configured Collection Schedule interval.

Viewing data in BMC Helix applications

View data collected from Microsoft SCOM in multiple BMC Helix applications.

To view events in BMC Helix Operations Management

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

Incoming events from Microsoft SCOM 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. Open link

To view the topology data in BMC Helix Discovery

In BMC Helix Discovery, select Explore > Data, and click <count> Import Records in the Miscellaneous section. The Import Record List page shows the CI records received from Microsoft SCOM. For information about records, see Managing your IT infrastructure Open link .

To view services and situations in BMC Helix AIOps

Before you view services and 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 services and situations for the event and topology data received from Microsoft SCOM. For information about situations, see Monitoring and investigating situations Open link .