Integrating with BMC Helix CMDB

BMC Helix CMDB (on-premises) stores and manages the configuration items (CIs) that represent your IT environment.   

Configure an integration with BMC Helix CMDB to view the topology data from BMC Helix CMDB in the following products and derive actionable insights:

• BMC Helix Discovery
• BMC Helix AIOps

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to integrate with BMC Helix CMDB, verify the integration, and view the collected data in various BMC products.

Before you begin

1. Have the egress IP of your tenant. Request the egress IP from BMC Software if you don't already have it.
2. Ensure that you have a firewall rule to allow traffic from the egress IP to the BMC Helix CMDB host on the listening port (default is 443).

To integrate with BMC Helix CMDB

1. In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, on the CONNECTORS tab, click in the SOURCES panel.
2. Click BMC Helix CMDB.
3. 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 CMDB_Host_PROD, CMDB_Host_TEST, and so on.

   2. Specify the BMC Helix CMDB host name and port number (default value is 443).
   3. Select the HTTPS check box to indicate that you plan to use an https connection to the BMC Helix CMDB  host.

   4. Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access the BMC Helix CMDB REST API.
      

      Warning

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

      
      

   5. Specify the number of maximum concurrent REST API requests that should be executed during a data collection schedule (default value is 5).
   6. Specify the time, in seconds, after which no attempt should be made to establish the connection (default value is 30 seconds).
   7. Click Proxy and specify if you want to configure a proxy server. If yes, specify the host name and port number (default value is 8888).
4. Click VALIDATE AND CREATE.
   The specified connection details are validated and the corresponding source connection is created in the Source Connection list.

5. 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.

   
   

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

7. Expand BMC CMDB Topology and specify the configuration parameters in the Collectors section as described in the following table:
   

   Parameter Name	Data type
   	BMC CMDB Topology
   Collection Schedule Specify the data collection frequency (in minutes) with which the business processes should be collected. For example, if you set this parameter to 5 mins, the collector runs every 5 mins.  For more information about this parameter, see Data collection schedule.	Applicable BMC recommendation: 60 minutes
   Data Collection Window Specify the historical time period (in minutes) from the current time for which the data should be collected from BMC Helix CMDB.  For example, if you set Collection Schedule parameter to 5 mins (considering 00:32 as the current time) and the Data Collection Window parameter to 5 mins, data is extracted from 00:27 to 00:32. For more information about this parameter, see Data collection window.	Applicable BMC recommendation: 60 minutes
   Data Latency Specify the time (in minutes) by which the data time window should be shifted far back on the timeline. This parameter is useful in slow, late data availability situations. For example, if you set the Collection Schedule parameter to 5 mins, the Data Collection Window parameter to 5 mins, and the Data Latency parameter to 2 mins, data is extracted from 00:23 to 00:28, when run from just after 00:30. For more information about this parameter, see Data latency.	Applicable
   Extract these Business Processes Select all or a subset of business processes from the list.  Important: You can choose to extract data only from the business process level, not from the business service level.  This list is updated automatically from BMC Helix CMDB. You can add multiple business processes to the same connector or create a different connector for each business process.	Applicable
   Dataset ID Specify the BMC Helix CMDB dataset ID. Default is BMC.ASSET.	Applicable
   Namespace Specify the BMC Helix CMDB namespace. Default is BMC.CORE.	Applicable

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

   Parameter Name	Default
   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.	250
   Max Batching Delay Specify the maximum time (in seconds) to wait before building a batch and processing.	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. For example, if you set the value to 2 seconds, retry is performed after 2, 4, 8, 16, ... seconds.	2 seconds
   Max Intra-Retry Delay Specify the maximum limit for the base retry delay. For example, if you set the value of this parameter to 60 seconds and the value of the Base Retry Delay parameter to 2 seconds, retries would be performed 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 64,...seconds later again.	60 seconds
   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.  For example, if you set the value of this parameter to 8 hours, and the value of the Base Retry Delay parameter 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 complete.	5 minutes

   
   
9. Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the selected data type.
10. 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 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 light blue arrow () indicates that topology data is being streamed.

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 BMC Helix CMDB. For information about records, see Managing your IT infrastructure .

To view services in BMC Helix AIOps

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

In BMC Helix AIOps, on the Overview page to view the services for the topology data received from BMC Helix CMDB .