Integrating with CA UIM

As a tenant administrator, perform the following steps to configure a connection with CA UIM , verify the connection, and view the collected event and metric data in various BMC Helix applications.

Supported versions

This connector supports version 20.3.3 of CA UIM  for data collection:

Planning for the connection

Review the following prerequisites to help you plan and configure a connection with CA UIM.

CA UIM prerequisites

Ensure that you have the following permissions to access CA UIM REST API: 

• Alarm Details
• Basic Management
• Web Service

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.

• The on-premises gateway must be able to reach the third-party product on the required port (default is 80).

In the preceding list, third-party product refers to CA UIM.

Configuring the connection with CA UIM

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 the following URL to access BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations:
     https://<hostName>:<portNumber>/swpui
2. On the CONNECTORS  tab, click in the SOURCES panel.
3. Click the CA UIM 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 CAUIM_Host_PROD, CAUIM_Host_TEST, and so on.

      
      

   2. Specify the CA UIM host name.
   3. Specify the CA UIM HTTP or HTTPS port number depending on the connection protocol (default port number is 80).
   4. Select the HTTPS option to use an https connection to the CA UIM host.
   5. Enter the user name and password for the CA UIM host.
   6. Specify the time, in seconds, after which no attempt should be made to establish the connection (d efault value is 30 seconds).
   7. 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).

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

2. 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 when the source connection is created.

3. Ensure that the options for the datatypes for which you want to collect data are selected.

4. Configure the collectors for the selected data types by clicking the respective data type in the Collectors section. Specify the parameters for the selected data type, as explained in the following table:
   
   Note: The ✅️  symbol indicates that this field is applicable to the data type.
   

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5. Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.
6. Configure the distributors for the selected data types by clicking the respective data type in the Distributors section.
   Specify the parameters for the selected data type, as explained in the following table:
   

   Parameter name	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 secondsExample: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 secondsExample: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,... seconds later.
   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 minutesExample: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.
   Attributes To Be Dropped When Updating Events	Specify the event attributes that you do not want to be updated in BMC Helix Operations Managementwhen events are updated. For example, if you do not want an event's severity, source address, source category, and subcategory to be updated in BMC Helix Operations Management , you need to specify those attributes in a comma-separated format: severity,source_address,source_category,source_subcategory .Important:You can obtain the event attribute names in BMC Helix Operations Management, by exporting any event data in JSON, BAROC, XML, or CSV format . The exported file contains all attributes of the event data, and from there you can identify the attributes to be dropped.

1. Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the selected data types.

2. 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 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.

   ImportantFor a data stream, the Run Latency (max/avg), Items (Avg per Run), and Last Run Status columns on the Streams page might show No Runs as the status during the data collection process. After the completion of the process, these columns are updated with an appropriate status.

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

Verifying the connection

From BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations , on the SOURCES panel, confirm that the data streams for the connection you created are running. Data streaming is indicated by moving colored arrows.

• A moving 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

View data collected from CA UIM in multiple 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 CA_UIM_Alarm class.
   

Incoming events from CA UIM 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-suppression-and-closure-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.

Viewing Situations in BMC Helix AIOps

Before you view situations in BMC Helix AIOps, ensure that the following prerequisites are met: 

1. CIs are present in BMC Helix Discovery or BMC Helix AIOps for the events that are being collected from CA UIM .
2. Create a Business Service model in one of the following applications:

   • BMC Helix Discovery. For more information, see Managing models.

   • BMC Helix AIOps. For more information, see Modeling services. 

3. Perform one of the following tasks:

   • To view ML-based situations, the AIOps Situations feature is enabled in BMC Helix AIOps. For more information, see Enabling the AIOps features.

   • To view policy-based situations, the correlation policy is created in BMC Helix Operations Management. For more information, see Creating and enabling event policies.

To view Situations

1. In BMC Helix AIOps , go to the Situations page.
   This page shows the Situations created from the events that are ingested into BMC Helix Operations Management . 
2. Click the required Situation to view the messages contained in the Situation and other details such as priority and severity of the message. 

For information about Situations, see Monitoring situations.

Mapping between CA UIM and BMC Helix Operations Management

The following table shows the mapping between CA UIM and BMC Helix Operations Management :