Integrating with Aternity

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations Aternity connector collects events, metrics, and topology data from Aternity.

Configure an integration with Aternity, to view the alert, metric, and topology data from Aternity.

BMC Helix application	Type of data collected or viewed	Benefits
BMC Helix Operations Management	Events ( Aternity alerts are received as events, even though Aternity separates events and alerts.)	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 Aternityin BMC Helix Discovery. Collect services from Aternityin 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

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations supports version 2022.6.2.3431 of Aternity for data collection.

Task 1: To plan 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 mode, 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 443).

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

Task 2: To configure the connection with Aternity

Depending on the deployment mode, perform one of the following steps to 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 Integrations on-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 Riverbed Aternity.
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 Aternity_Host_PROD, Aternity_Host_TEST, and so on.
2. Specify the Aternity host name (default is lms-odata.aternity.com) and port number (default is 443).
3. Ensure that the HTTPS check box is selected to indicate that you plan to use an https connection to the Aternity host.
  Warning
  We recommend that you do not select the Allow Unsigned Certificate option in a production environment. You might want to select this to allow unsigned certificates in a test environment. See the Aternity documentation to learn how to install SSL certificates.
4. Specify the maximum number of concurrent REST API requests that should be executed during a data collection schedule (default value is 5).
5. Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access the Aternity REST API.
6. 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 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 you create a connection for a source.
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:

Parameter name	Description	Data Type
Parameter name	Description	Aternity Alerts	Aternity Metrics	Aternity Topology
Collection Schedule	Select one of the following options to specify the data collection frequency: Duration: When you select this option, data collection happens constantly. Specify the schedule in minutes, hours, or day. Default: 5 minutes Example: Collection Schedule is set to 5 mins. Current time is 00:30. If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected every 5 mins, first at 00:30 and next at 00:35, and so on. Cron schedule: When you select this option, data collection happens periodically. Specify the schedule by using a cron expression. A cron expression is a string consisting of five subexpressions (fields) that describe individual details of the schedule. These fields, separated by blank spaces, can contain any of the allowed values with various combinations of the allowed characters for that field. Default: /5 * * * (evaluates to 5 minutes) Format: Minutes *Hours (24-hour format)* Day of Month Month Day of Week** Example: If you specify 10 15 3 7 * , data is collected at 15:10 hours every third day in the month of July. For more information about how this parameter affects data collection, see Data collection schedule.	✅️	✅️	✅️
Data Collection Window	Specify the historical time period (in minutes) from the current time for which the data should be collected from Aternity. Default: 5 minutes (alerts, metrics), 60 minutes (topology) Example: Collection Schedule is set to 5 mins. Data Collection Window is set to 5 mins. Current time is 00:30. If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected first at 00:30 for the interval, 00:25 - 00:30, and next at 00:35 for the interval, 00:30 - 00:35, and so on. For more information about this parameter, see Data collection window.	✅️	✅️	✅️
Data Latency	Specify the time (in minutes) by which the data time window should be shifted back on the timeline. This parameter is useful in delayed data availability situations. Default: 0 minutes Example: Collection Schedule is set to 5 mins. Data Collection Window is set to 10 mins. Data Latency is set to 2 mins. Current time is 00:30. If you run the collector just after 00:30, data is collected first at 00:30 for the interval 00:18 to 00:28 and next at 00:35 for the interval 0:23 to 00:33, and so on. For more information about how this parameter affects data collection, see Data latency.	✅️	✅️	✅️
Devices	Select All or a subset of devices from the list. This list of devices is updated automatically from Aternity.	❌️	✅️	❌️
Applications	Select All or a subset of applications from the list. This list of applications is updated automatically from Aternity.	✅️	✅️	❌️

Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the selected data types.

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 seconds Example: 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 seconds Example: 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 minutes Example: 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 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 instance 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.

Important
For 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 connection

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 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.

To view data in BMC Helix applications

View data collected from Aternity 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 AternityAlert class.

Incoming events from Aternity 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

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 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 Aternity. 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 , create a Business Service model in BMC Helix Discovery. For information about creating models, see Managing models.

In , on the Overview page, view the services and situations for the event and topology data received from Aternity.

For information about Services, see Monitoring services. For information about Situations, see Monitoring situations.