Using the BMC Defender Server interface

BMC Defender Server  employs a tabbed navigation system, where tabs are nested within other tabs. You can traverse the navigation tabs to reach the appropriate page of the system.

The tabs that are displayed depend on the logged in user's role (such as admin, user, guest, and other roles). Administrators can configure roles (System > Logins > Users) and security options (System > Logins > Security).

Click the Help link at the upper-right corner of page for brief explanations and links to the online technical documentation.

The following list presents some of the basic features of BMC Defender Server:

• The Messages > Search page allows you to view recent and historical message data. The messages are displayed in reverse chronological order, so the most recent event is displayed at the top of the page.
• The Analyze feature on the Messages > Search page (and others), provides a way to start making sense of the depicted data, showing devices, users, and other items associated with the raw message listing.
• The Correlation tab provides access to special correlation features, including user-defined correlation threads. These comprise a major part of the BMC Defender Server, and are fairly easy to use.
• The Alerts features monitor catalog counters, send a message back to the BMC Defender Server stream for further correlation, and can open tickets when incidents occur.
• The Tickets features provide the highest level of correlation on the system, and creates actionable tickets based upon alerts. Each ticket is associated with a particular alert. The tickets component permits you to open and close tickets. tickets can run actions, such as sending e-mail.
• The BMC Defender Server E-Mail interface, accessed via the System tab, allows the administrator to configure the SMTP parameters used by e-mail notifications and other sections of the system.
• The operator should monitor the system load, and reduce the amount of information being correlated. In particular, firewalls and other chatty managed devices can have their messages redirected to an auxiliary file to reduce the correlation load, using the Filters section of the program.
• BMC Defender Server includes an advisory interface that performs hourly checks of system health, and that create an Advisory link at the top of the display when a problem exists. You can acknowledge and disable specific advisories in their profile.

This section provides information about the following topics: