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.

Related topics

Supported-out-of-the-box-integrations-for-BMC-Helix-Intelligent-Integrations

Editing-and-deleting-integrations

Event-deduplication-suppression-and-closure-for-reducing-event-noise

Monitoring-the-on-premises-gateway-node-for-streaming-interruptions-and-node-health


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.

Connector steps.png

Supported versions

This connector supports the following versions of Microsoft SCOM for data collection:

  • 2022
  • 2019

Planning for the connection

Review the following prerequisites to help you plan and configure a connection with Microsoft SCOM:

Microsoft SCOM prerequisites

  • The database user that you plan to use for the connection is assigned the Read-Only role to the Operations Manager database.
    Note that BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations uses a non-TLS JDBC / JTDC call to connect to the Operations Manager database.
  • If the database user is an Active Directory user, ensure that both the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations on-premises server and the Operation Manager database server belong to the same domain. No such restrictions are applicable if the database user is an SQL user. 

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 1433).

In the preceding list, third-party product refers to Microsoft SCOM.

Configuring the connection with Microsoft SCOM

  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 add_icon.pngin the SOURCES panel.

  3. Click the 

    Microsoft SCOM

     tile.

  4. Specify the source connection details:

    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 MSSQLSERVER_PROD, MSSQLSERVER_TEST, and so on.


    2. Specify the Microsoft SCOM database host name and port number (default value is 1433).
    3. Specify the database user name and password.
    4. Select the Windows Authentication option if the specified database user is Service Account user. 
      If you don't select this option, the database user is an SQL Server user and connection method used will be SQL authentication.
    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).
  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. Ensure that the options for the datatypes for which you want to collect data are selected.

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

    The [confluence_table-plus] macro is a standalone macro and it cannot be used inline.

  9. Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.
  10. Click a data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Distributors section as described 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. 
  11. Click CREATE DISTRIBUTORS to create the required distributor streams for the selected data types.
  12. Click VALIDATE AND CREATE and then click SAVE STREAM to save the stream.
    After you save the stream, the connector that you just created is listed on the SOURCES panel.
  13. On the SOURCES panel, click ConfigureMediator_icon.pngConfigure Mediator for the source connection that you created and then expand MS SCOM Events (JDBC Pull). 
  14. Remove the SCOMGroups parameter from the collector configuration.
  15. On the SOURCES panel, move the slider to the right to start the data stream for the connector you created in step 12.
    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 data streams, see Starting-or-stopping-data-streams    .



Removing the SCOMGroups parameter from collector configuration

To improve the performance you need to remove the SCOMGroups parameter for events, metrics, and topology.

  1. Click icon_gear.png Configure Mediator adjacent to Microsoft SCOM.
  2. Scroll down and expand the MS SCOM Events (JDBC Pull) section.
  3. Enable the Edit JSON option under the Collector Configuration tab.
    You can see the JSON format of collector configuration parameters.

  4. Delete the following JSON object that represents the SCOMGroups parameter:

    SCOMGroups parameter in JSON format
    "SCOMGroups": {
           "dependentValues": {},
           "choices": []
         },
  5. Click SAVE.
  6. Disable the Edit JSON option and ensure the SCOMGroups parameter is not getting displayed. 
  7. Repeat the steps 3 to 6 for the MS SCOM Metrics (JDBC Pull) and MS SCOM Topology (JDBC Pull) sections.
  8. Click SAVE & CLOSE.


Verifying 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.

SCOM_Stream.png

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

Important

If the event or metric data is ingested by using BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations, and the topology data is ingested through some other means, all the use cases in BMC Helix AIOps might not work as expected because the external IDs generated by BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations and BMC Helix Discovery differ. In addition, host name might differ in both the products. 

To view events in BMC Helix Operations Management

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

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-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.

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 .

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 Managing models .  

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.

 

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