Integrating with Micro Focus NNMi to collect events and topology

Micro Focus NNMi provides the ability to monitor the physical and virtual networks. By using NNMi, view the network fault, availability, and performance in your network infrastructure.

Configure an integration with Micro Focus NNMi, to view the event and topology data and derive actionable insights.

Related topics

Editing-and-deleting-integrations

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

You can view the collected data in various BMC Helix applications 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 Discovery	Topology	Collect all CIs from Micro Focus NNMiin BMC Helix Discovery. Collect services from Micro Focus NNMiin 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 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.

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

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On the CONNECTORS tab, click in the SOURCES panel .
Click the Micro Focus NNMi Events 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 NNMi_Host_PROD, NNMi_Host_TEST, and so on.
  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 NNMi_Host_PROD, NNMi_Host_TEST, and so on.
2. Specify the Micro Focus NNMi host name.
3. Specify the Micro Focus NNMi HTTP or HTTPS port number depending on the connection protocol ( default value is 80).
4. Select the HTTPS option to use an https connection to the Micro Focus NNMih ost.
5. Specify the number of maximum concurrent REST API requests that should be executed during a collection schedule (d efault value is 5).
6. Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access the Micro Focus NNMi REST API.
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).
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.
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Ensure that the options for the datatypes for which you want to collect data are selected.
Click a data type and specify the configuration parameters in the Collectors section as described in the following table:
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Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data type.

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 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.

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 Management when 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 type.
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 the status as No Runs during the data collection process. After completion of the process, these columns are updated with an appropriate status.
  ImportantFor a data stream, the Run Latency (max/avg), Items (Avg per Run), and Last Run Status columns on the Streams page might show the status as No Runs during the data collection process. After completion of the process, these columns are updated with an appropriate status.
  For more information about data streams, see Starting-or-stopping-data-streams.

Task 3: To verify 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.

A moving red arrow () indicates that the event stream is running. Event 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.

To view data in BMC Helix applications

View data collected from MicroFocus NNMi in multiple BMC Helix applications.

To view events in BMC Helix Operations Management

In BMC Helix Operations Management, select Monitoring > Events.
Filter the events by the MFNnmiEvent class.
Incoming events from Micro Focus NNMi 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 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 Micro Focus NNMi. 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 to view the services and situations for the event and topology data received from Micro Focus NNMi . For information about situations, see Monitoring and investigating situations.