Integrating with VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs Cloud Foundry

VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs Cloud Foundry is an opinionated application platform designed to bring efficiency, security, and speed to custom development organizations. Cloud Foundry makes it faster and easier to build, test, deploy, and scale applications, providing a choice of the underlying infrastructure, developer frameworks, and application services.

Configure an integration with Cloud Foundry to view topology data from Cloud Foundry and derive actionable insights.

BMC Helix application	Type of data collected or viewed	Benefits
BMC Helix Discovery	Topology	Collect all CIs fromCloud Foundryin BMC Helix Discovery. Collect services fromCloud Foundryin 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	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 Cloud Foundry, verify the connection, and view the collected data in various BMC Helix applications.

Supported versions

BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations supports the following versions of Cloud Foundry for data collection:

2.13
2.10

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 Cloud Foundry.

Task 2: To configure the connection with VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs Cloud Foundry

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 Cloud Foundry.
Specify the following 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, CF_Host_PROD, CF_Host_TEST, and so on.
2. Specify the Cloud Foundry host name and port number (default value is 443).
3. Specify the user name and password. Ensure that the specified user can access the Cloud Foundry REST API.
4. Select the HTTPS check box if you plan to use an https connection to the Cloud Foundry host.
  Caution
  We recommend that you do not select the Allow Unsigned Certificate option in a production environment. You might want to select this option to allow unsigned certificates in a test environment. See the Dynatrace documentation to learn how to install SSL certificates.
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 Client ID.
7. Specify the Client password.
8. Specify a valid API key. For more information, see the Cloud Foundry documentation.
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 you create a connection for a source.

Click the topology 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	Cloud Foundry 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.	Applicable
Data Collection Window	Specify the historical time period (in minutes) from the current time for which the data should be collected from SolarWinds NPM. Default: 60 minutes 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 .	Applicable
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.	Applicable

Click CREATE COLLECTORS to create the required collector streams for the topology data type.

Click the topology 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 topology 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 instance that you created is listed in the SOURCES panel. Move the slider to the right to start the topology data stream.
- SAVE AND START STREAM: Click this button if you want to save the integration details and start receiving topology 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 integration

In BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations , on the SOURCES panel, confirm that the topology data stream for the integration you created is running. Data streaming is indicated by moving colored arrows.

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 VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs Cloud Foundry in multiple BMC Helix applications

To view topology 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 Cloud Foundry. For information about records, see Managing your IT infrastructure.

To view services in BMC Helix AIOps

Before you view services 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 for the topology data received from Cloud Foundry. For more information about services, see Monitoring key performance indicators and entities.