Integrating with AWS CloudWatch

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to integrate 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:

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.

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

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.

Configuring the connection with AWS CloudWatch

1. Access BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations:
   • BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations SaaS – Log on to BMC Helix Portal, and click Launch on BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations.
   • BMC Helix Intelligent Integrationson-premises gateway – Use one of the following URLs to access BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations:
     • http://<hostName>:<portNumber>/swpui
     • https://<hostName>:<portNumber>/swpui
2. On the CONNECTORS  tab, click  in the SOURCES panel.

3. Click the 

   AWS CloudWatch

   tile.

4. Specify the following details for the source connection:

   1. Specify a unique instance name.

      Best practice
      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 AWS_Host_PROD, AWS_Host_TEST, and so on.

   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).
5. Click VALIDATE AND CREATE.
   The specified connection details are validated and the corresponding source connection is created in the Source Connection list.
   

6. 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.

7. Click a data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Collectors section as described in the following table:
8. Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the event data type.
9. Click the event data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Distributors section as described in the following table:
   
10. Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the event data type.
11. 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.

Verifying the connection

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.

Viewing data in BMC Helix applications

To view events in BMC Helix Operations Management

1. In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Events.
2. 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

To view metrics in BMC Helix Operations Management

1. In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Devices.
2. Click the links for the required device.

3. 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 Managing models.  

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