Integrating with CA APM

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

Supported versions

This connector supports the version 10.7 SP3 of CA APM for data collection.

Planning for the connection

• Depending on the location of the third-party product (SaaS, on-premises), 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 8081).

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

Configuring the connection with CA APM

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 APM

    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 CAAPM_Host_PROD, CAAPM, and so on.

      
      

   2. Specify the CA APM host name.
   3. Specify the CA HTTP or HTTPS port number depending on the connection protocol. The default port number is 8081.
   4. Select the HTTPS option to use an https connection to the CA APM host. Select this option when the protocol is https.
   5. Enter the user name and password for the CA APM host.

   6. Enter the token.
      For more information about tokens, see APM REST API..

   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).
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 when the source connection is created.

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

8. 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:
   

   Important

   In addition to the parameters described in the following table, you can use some other parameters to tailor the amount of data that you want to collect from CA APM. For more information, see Handling large data from CA APM.

   The ✅️ symbol indicates that this field applies to the data type.
   

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9. Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.
10. 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 and processing a batch.Default: 3 seconds
    Base Retry Delay	Specify the initial time (in seconds) for which to wait before retrying to build and process a batch. 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 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, 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 CA APM 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_APM_Alert class.
   

Incoming events from CA APM 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 link 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..

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations identifies all the CA APM KPI metrics. All the KPI metrics are prefixed with KPI  in BMC Helix Operations Management. You can use these metrics for baselining.

To view topology in BMC Helix Discovery

1. In BMC Helix Discovery, select Explore > Data.
2. In the search box at the top-right corner, search for the CA APM host name.  
3. Click External Elements.
4. Click the entity name to view its topology.

The following figures show the topology for the dotNetPaymentBackend service in the CA APM UI and in the BMC Helix Discovery UI:

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 the Splunk Enterprise report.
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 Creating service models..

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..

Viewing services in BMC Helix AIOps

Before you view a service in BMC Helix AIOps, create a service model (for example, BackEnd_Model) for the dotNetPaymentBackend topology collected in BMC Helix Discovery. For instructions, see Managing models..

To view services in BMC Helix AIOps

1. In BMC Helix AIOps, go to the Services page.
   This page shows the business service for the BackEnd_Model business service model. 
   
   
   
2. 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.  
3. 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..

Handling large data from CA APM

Use the hostGroupingCount parameter to handle large data coming from CA APM and avoid errors such as the data collection API not responding properly. Divide CA APM hosts into groups by using this parameter. The number of hosts in each group is equal to the value that you specify for this parameter.

The CA APM connector fetches data for one group of hosts first and then for another group until all the groups are processed.

For example, if there are 10 hosts in CA APM and you set this parameter value to 5, the connector fetches data for the first group of 5 hosts and then for the next group of 5 hosts.

To edit the hostGroupingCount parameter:

1. Click Configure Mediator adjacent to CA APM .
2. Expand the CA APM section.
3. Enable the Edit JSON option.
   You can see the JSON format of CA APM configuration parameters.
4. Edit the value of the hostGroupingCount parameter as required.
   The default value for this parameter is 5, the minimum value is 1, and the maximum value is 100,000.
5. Click VALIDATE to validate the settings. 
6. Click SAVE & CLOSE.

Marking devices for deletion in BMC Helix Operations Management

If the devices in BMC Helix Operations Management are not collecting any metrics data for a particular time period, you can mark them for deletion by using the shouldSupportTopologyLifecycle and itemExpiryDuration parameters.

For example, if you want to mark devices for deletion that do collect any metrics data in 5 hours in BMC Helix Operations Management, set the shouldSupportTopologyLifecycle parameter to true and set the value of itemExpiryDuration parameter to 5 hours.

To mark the devices for deletion:

1. Click Configure Mediator adjacent to CA APM.
2. Expand the CA APM METRICS section.
3. Click COLLECTOR CONFIGURATION.
4. Enable the Edit JSON option to view the collection configuration parameters in JSON format.
   
5. Set the value of the shouldSupportTopologyLifecycle parameter to true and then click SAVE.
    By default, the value is set to false.
6. Click DISTRIBUTER CONFIGURATION.
7. Enable the Edit JSON option to view the distributer configuration parameters in JSON format.
   

8. Edit the itemExpiryDuration parameter as shown in the following example: 
   

   "itemExpiryDuration":{
   "unit": "HOURS"
   "value": 5
   }

   • The valid values for unit are SECONDS, MINUTES, HOURS, and DAYS.
   • The default value for itemExpiryDuration is 30 days and minimum value is 1 hour.
   • If itemExpiryDuration is set to less than 1 hour, BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations considers the value to be 1 hour.
9. Click SAVE to save the settings. 
10. Click SAVE & CLOSE.

Mapping between CA APM and BMC Helix Operations Management

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