This documentation supports the releases of BMC Helix Service Monitoring till September 2021 (21.3.03). Documentation for later versions is available in the BMC Helix AIOps documentation space. To view the documentation, select a version from the Product version menu.

Integrating with SolarWinds NPM to monitor events and CI data


SolarWinds NPM is a software that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues. As a tenant administrator, you use BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations to add, edit, and delete SolarWinds NPM integrations.

Related topic

Supported-out-of-the-box-integrations-for-BMC-Helix-Intelligent-Integrations

Enabling-disabling-or-deleting-integrations

Tip: View separate events and alerts in BMC Helix Operations Management

You can see SolarWinds NPM events on BMC Helix Operations Management > Events page. Although SolarWinds NPM separates alerts and events, you can seem them all as events in BMC Helix Operations Management. To see the difference, view the event details. If the event was an alert in SolarWinds NPM, the event class appears as SolarWindsAlert. If the event was an event in SolarWinds NPM, the event class appears as SolarWindsEvent.


Before you begin

Ensure that you have downloaded and installed the Connector. You must choose the Base Connector connector type while downloading the connector. Without the Connector, you cannot proceed with the integration.

Important
  • Download the script on a docker-enabled Linux server.
  • The SolarWinds NPM host must be accessible from your docker-enabled Linux server.


To integrate with SolarWinds NPM

  1. Go to BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations > Available integrations tab if the tab does not open by default.
  2. On the SolarWinds NPM product tile, click Configure.

    solarwinds_tile.png

    On this tile, you can also view the build number of the product and the name of the entity who made the product available for configuration.
  3. Enter the following source details:
    solarwinds_integ.png


    • Integration Name: Provide a name for the integration.
    • Select Connector: Select a Connector. If no Connector is available, click the Add Connector icon add_connector_icon.pngto download and install a Connector.

    • API URL: Enter the API URL.

      How do I obtain the API URL?

      The API URL is the name of the host where you have installed SolarWinds NPM, appended by port 17778. Ensure that you use the https protocol in the API URL.
      https://<

      Unknown macro: confluence_display.

      _host_name>:17778

      SolarWinds NPM uses the following default ports:

      • API URL: 17778
      • User interface URL: 8787
    • User Name and Password: Enter the credentials that you used while installing SolarWinds NPM.
    • Select entities to be registered: Select the available entities whose data you want to view after they are registered. You can select all entities.

  4. In the Customize Entity Configuration section, configure the advanced settings for the entities that you have selected in the previous step. You will see the Configure option for the selected entity types as shown below. 
    dynatrace_entity_config.png

    To configure the advanced settings, do the following steps:

    1. Click Configure.
    2. Based on the type of the entity selected, configure the following settings:
      • Event: Specify the refresh time for events in seconds. By default, the refresh time is set to 60 seconds.
      • CI: Specify the refresh time for CIs in hours. By default, the refresh time is set to 24 hours.
      • Metric: Configure the following settings:
        1. Specify the refresh time for metrics in minutes. By default, the refresh time is set to 10 minutes.

        2. Specify the metric type that you want to monitor. The following section displays a complete list of metric types: 

          Metric types
          • Maps
          • Nodes
          • VCenters
          • DataCenters
          • Clusters
          • Hosts
          • Interfaces
          • Groups
          • Graphs
          • HardwareInfo
          • HardwareCategoryStatus
          • HardwareItem
          • Platform
          • ResourcePools
          • VirtualMachines
    3. Click Save.
  5. Click Configure to configure the integration. 
  6. You can view the added integration from Integrations > Configured Integrations.
    On the integration tile, you can see the data being received and view the following details:

    solarwinds_connected.png

    • Name of the integration with its build number.
    • The incoming data. In this example, 5,046 CIs and 36 events are received.
    • The name of the user who modified the integration along with the time of the modification. In this example, it is the admin user.
    • The Connector status. In this example, the status is Active.


To validate the SolarWinds NPM integration

Perform the following actions to validate the integration:

  • Ensure that the status of the integration is Connected. The following statuses are also valid:
    • Configuring
    • Disabled
    • Disconnected

  • Go to 

    BMC Helix Operations Management

     > Events to ensure that you can see events in BMC Helix Operations Management.
    For more information, see Event monitoring.

  • Ensure that you can see data in the following applications:


SolarWinds NPM event class

The following event classes are created in BMC Helix Operations Management to display the SolarWinds NPM data:

  • SolarWindsEvent
    • Parent class name: EVENT

    • Attributes

  • SolarWindsAlert
    • Parent class name: EVENT

    • Attributes


SolarWinds NPM event slot mapping


Frequently asked questions on the SolarWinds NPM integration

This section lists a few frequently asked questions (FAQs) with answers that might provide more insight into this integration.

What is the difference between an alert and an event in SolarWinds NPM?

For this information, see the SolarWinds NPM documentation.

Why can't I see all the entities in BMC Helix Service Monitoring?

In BMC Helix Service Monitoring, you can see only business services. To view all entities other than business services, go to the BMC Helix Discovery console. You can cross launch to BMC Helix Discovery from the BMC Helix Service Monitoring console. For example, to check the list of imported Configuration Items (CIs), do the following steps:

  1. In the BMC Helix Discovery console, from the main menu, select Explore > Data.
    The Infrastructure page opens. This page lists the total number of each kind of infrastructure item in the system, as well as any infrastructure objects assigned to you. It also displays a list of infrastructure-related reports.

  2. To view a list of CIs, under the Miscellaneous section, click <Count> Import Records.
    A list of CIs is displayed. For more information about how to search or filter these infrastructure items, see Managing your IT infrastructure.

  3. Click any Dynatrace CI from the list to display the View Object page, which lists the attributes of the object and its relationships with other objects. For more information about the attribute mappings, see ImportRecord and for more information on steps to modeling the services, see Start anywhere application modeling.

Why are the SolarWinds NPM events missing if the integration was disabled for more than three days?

By default, the BMC Helix Intelligent Integrations collects the historical event data for the last three days (72 hours) only from SolarWinds NPM. If you disable the SolarWinds NPM integration and enable it after three days, the maximum historical event data collected is available only for the last three days. For example, If you disabled the integration on July 10th, enabled it on July 20th, you will see the historical data is from July 17th to July 20th only (for the last three days or 72 hours). Any historical event data before the last three days is not collected.


 

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