Integrating with Catchpoint

Catchpoint monitors the performance of the applications and gives you actionable insights across the Internet. As a tenant administrator, you can optimize the performance, availability, reliability, and reachability of the applications in a IT network. Use the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations Catchpoint connector to collect alerts, metrics, and topology data from Catchpoint.

BMC Helix application	Type of data collected or viewed	Benefits
BMC Helix Operations Management	Events ( Catchpoint alerts are received as 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	Use alarm and variate policies to detect anomalies and eliminate false positives for more accurate results while monitoring the health of your system. For more information, see Detecting anomalies by using static and dynamic thresholds.
BMC Helix Discovery	Topology	Collect all CIs from Catchpoint in BMC Helix Discovery. Collect services from Catchpoint in BMC Helix Discovery in a format that can be consumed by BMC Helix AIOps. 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 Dashboards	Metrics	Create dashboards to get a consolidated view of data collected from third-party products across your environment. Improve the efficiency of your system by monitoring the key performance metrics and r espond to issues quickly to minimize the down time. For more information, see Creating custom dashboards.
BMC Helix AIOps	Services (created from topology)	Monitor the overall health of a service. When the service gets impacted by any factor, view the events generated because of the impact, analyze the causes of the impact, and quickly remediate those events to restore the health of the impacted service. For more information, see Monitoring services.

Supported versions

This connector supports Catchpoint API version 2.

Planning for the connection

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.

You have the latest Technology Knowledge Update (TKU) required to collect the topology data from the third-party product. To obtain the latest TKU, see Schedule and Roadmap

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

Configuring the connection with Catchpoint

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
On the CONNECTORS tab, click in the SOURCES panel.
Click the Catchpoint tile.
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 CPT_Host_PROD, CPT_Host_TEST, and so on.
2. Specify the Catchpoint host.
3. Specify the v2 Api Token. The generated API token will remain valid for two years.
  Click here to see the instructions to generate the token in Catchpoint
  Logon to Catchpoint Portal https://io.catchpoint.com/auth/Account/Login.
  Navigate to the API settings page.
  Scroll down to the REST API section.
  Click Add Consumer.
  Enter appropriate Name, Contact, and select the Status to Active.
  Click Save.
  Copy the newly-generated Rest API V2 Key.
4. Specify the HTTP or HTTPS port number depending on the connection protocol. The default port number is 443.
5. Select the HTTPS option to use an https connection to the Catchpoint host.
6. 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)
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 when the source connection is created.
Ensure that the options for the datatypes for which you want to collect data are selected.
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:

The ✅️ symbol indicates that this field applies to the data type.
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Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.

Configure the distributors for the selected data types by clicking the respective data type in the Distributors section and specifying 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.

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 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 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 Catchpoint 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

InBMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Events.
Filter the events by CatchpointAlert class.

Incoming events from Catchpoint are processed in BMC Helix Operations Management through a set of rules to determine whether the incoming event contains the results of same test on the same node and processed accordingly. For more information, see Event-deduplication-suppression-and-closure-for-reducing-event-noise.

For information about events, see Monitoring and managing events.

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 .

To view topology in BMC Helix Discovery

In BMC Helix Discovery, select Explore > Data.
In the Miscellaneous section, click the icon showing the number of Import Records.
In the Import Record List page, perform the following steps:
1. Use the filter option in the Source column to view the records imported from Catchpoint .
2. Use the sorting option in the Start Time column to arrange the records in descending order, so that the latest imported record is displayed at the top.
3. Select the record showing at the top of the list, expand the Actions menu to click Manual Groups option.
  A dialog box is displayed showing the list of existing groups. If there is no Catchpoint group, click the Create button to create a new group for Catchpointrecords.
4. Close the dialog box.
  In the Import Record List page, under the Manual Groups column, you can see the assigned group's name adjacent to the Catchpointrecord.
In BMC Helix Discovery , select Manage > Knowledge.
The Knowledge page is displayed.
1. Scroll down to expand the Import Data Sources branch.
2. From the expanded branch, click the Catchpoint node.
  You can see the Pattern Module: Import.Catchpoint page.
Click the link displayed against the Pattern field.
The Pattern: Import.Catchpoint.CatchpointImport page is displayed.
1. Expand the Action menu and click Run Pattern.
  The Run this Pattern dialog box is displayed.
2. Ensure the Catchpointgroup remains selected in the drop-down list under the Run against Group field and click Run Pattern.
  The Running Pattern: Import.Catchpoint.CatchpointImport page is displayed. Wait till the status changes from Running Pattern to Pattern Run Completed.
3. Open the Import.Catchpoint.CatchpointImport link in new window.
  The Pattern: Import.Catchpoint.CatchpointImport page is displayed.
Click the link adjacent to the Maintained External Elements field.
The External Element List page is displayed. You can see the list of nodes imported from Catchpoint .
Click a node name to view its topology.

The following figures show the topology for the Catchpoint service in the BMC Helix Discovery UI:

To view services in BMC Helix AIOps

In BMC Helix AIOps, go to the Services page.
This page shows the Catchpoint service.
To view the impact on the service, hover over the service.
The impact score in percentage and Situations, events, incidents, or configuration items (CIs) associated with a service are displayed.
Click the service to view the health summary, causal analysis, health insights, and other key metrics of interest.

For more information about services, see Monitoring services.