Configuring SevOne Observer jobs

Using the SevOne Observer functionality, you can load monitored servers and their relationships, and then visualize this data as a topology view.

Before you begin

The two Observer load jobs are supported by different SevOne versions. The new v2load job uses updated and new SevOne APIs and hence benefits from their capabilities and performance uplifts, while also providing backward compatibility for previous versions.

  • For SevOne versions up to versions 6.8.0, use the standard load job.

  • For SevOne versions 7.2 and later, use the v2load job

For v2load jobs: IP addresses are no longer discovered as separate resources. Instead, they are added as an ipAddress property under both devices and network interfaces.

Ensure you have the SevOne server details to hand, such as the username and password.

Naming convention for vertex properties:
All vertex property names follow the camelCase naming standard, where the first word starts with a lowercase letter and subsequent words start with uppercase letters with no spaces or underscores.
Examples
ipAddress
entityTypes
altName

About this task

SevOne Observer jobs extract SevOne managed servers and their relationships via REST API calls.

As of the most current version, the SevOne Observer also maps the following data fields for interfaces:

  • Object alternative name: Used by SevOne administrators to specify a different name for an interface object.

  • System description (or 'interface description'): Used to identify the use of specific interfaces, and usually extracted from the device configuration directly.

  • User description: Like object alternative name, this field enables SevOne administrators to override the system description of the interface provided by the device.

Enhanced modeling

The SevOne Observer models relationships from network interface to network interface.

New for v2load jobs

  • The v2load job lets you choose which entity type is to be assigned to a device using the new Device entity type parameter. You can choose values of either deviceClass or vendorModel, or both.

    • deviceClass - If the SevOne Device Class value returned via the job is, for example, switch, then an entity of switch will be assigned. If it is missing or unknown, the entity type assigned by default is host.
    • vendorModel - The entity type assigned to the device will be a combination of vendor and model properties returned from SevOne, for example if the vendor is cisco and the model is 1234, then the entity type assigned will be cisco1234. If these values are missing or unknown, the value assigned will be the device class value, such as switch.
    • If both are selected, the device will have two entity types assigned, for example switch,cisco12345.
    Tip: If you have specified a File Enrichment rule for a SevOne Observer job that updates the entityTypes property of a device, then the specified value will also be included.

  • The v2load job lets you use resource groups via the new Grouping Vertex Preference parameter. You can select values of either hostToHost or deviceGroup, or both, or none. If none are selected, no grouping is performed.

    • hostToHost - If selected, this groups all devices within a device group into a single host-to-host resource group. For example, if a v2load job contains two device groups specified in the device group path parameter, two resource groups are created each containing the devices belonging to the group.
    • deviceGroup - If selected, this groups all resources (that is, both devices and their network interfaces) that belong to a device group into a resource group. For example, if a v2load job contains two device groups specified in the device group path parameter, two resource groups are created each containing the devices and interfaces belonging to the group.
  • The v2load job introduces support for discovering custom object types beyond the standard network interfaces. This feature enables modeling of specialized equipment such as Optical Network Terminals (ONTs) and other custom SevOne object types.
    Custom object type names parameter
    Enter a comma-separated list of object type names to discover.
    The observer will query SevOne for these object types and model them as child resources of their parent devices. Custom objects are discovered as child objects of devices in SevOne and will be directly connected to their parent device in topology with a 'contains' relationship.
    Supported pattern matching:
    • Exact match: 'gateway' - Discovers only objects with exact type name 'gateway'
    • Starts with: 'gateway*' - Discovers all object types starting with 'gateway'
    • Ends with: '*Notifications' - Discovers all object types ending with 'Notifications'
    • Contains: '*Interface*' - Discovers all object types containing 'Interface' (such as 'Interface Extension')
    Important:
    • The keyword 'interface' (exact match) is reserved and cannot be used, as network interfaces are discovered separately
    • Wildcard patterns like 'Inter*' or '*interface' are allowed and will discover custom types like 'Interface Extension'
    • Object type names are case-insensitive
    • Special characters in type names are automatically handled

  • The v2load job introduces support for partial link modelling via the Model half link parameter, which is set to false by default. If you set this parameter to true, the v2load job will discover and model both resources connected via full links and half links , thereby providing a more complete and accurate network topology.

    • Full links - Only confirmed links corroborated from both ends are modeled.
    • Half links - Links observed from one side only but inferred from available data are also modeled.

The following link examples show the differences between a full link and a partial link.

Figure that shows a full link example

Figure that shows a partial link example

SevOne job type

You define and start the following jobs.

SevOne load and v2load job

Run these jobs whenever you need SevOne topology data refreshed.

By default, load jobs are one-off, transient jobs that do a full upload of all requested topology data as soon as they are triggered.

You can also run these jobs (again) from the Observer UI, or schedule them to run at set times when configuring them.

Procedure

Define or edit the following parameters, then click Run job to save and run the job.

Remember: For SevOne versions up to versions 6.8, select load. For SevOne versions 7.2 and later, select v2load (which has a number of additional optional parameters).

Encryption requirement: See the Configuring observer jobs security topic for more information.

SevOne Observer job parameters for load job

Parameter Action Details
Unique ID Enter a unique name for the job Required
Hostname Enter the SevOne hostname Required
Data Tenant Specify the data tenant used for the device group or groups. Required
Username Specify the SevOne username Required
Password Specify the SevOne password Required. Use plain text.
Device group path Specify the device group path to be discovered. To discover more than one group, enter a comma-separated list. Required
Number of SevOne hops Choose the number of hops to be discovered Required. Default is 2, maximum hops is 3.
HTTPS enabled Select true to enable HTTPS connection. If true, you must also provide the target system certificate. Required
Connectivity type Select one of the following topology relationship types: host (creates a direct host-to-host topology relationship), or network interface (creates a relationship between the hosts' network interfaces) Required
Target system certificate Specify a certificate by name to load into the trustStore. Optional
SSL certificate hostname verification Choose whether SSL validation is on or off. Turning SSL validation off will use HTTPS without host verification. Optional
Access scope Enter text to provide a scope for the resources. Access scope can help map alerts to resources when resources in different scopes share the same parameters, such as matchTokens. Optional.
Tip: You can define access scope for locations, project names, namespaces, etc.
Bulk load job Select either true or false to distribute the loading of job data more evenly across partitions. This is useful if some jobs contain substantially more data than others. The default is 'false'. Optional
Generate debug support file Set this parameter to 'True' in order to capture the output of the next scheduled job run as a file. This file will be stored with an observer's log files and can be used to debug observer issues, for example at the request of your designated support team, or while using a test environment. For one-off jobs (that is, Load jobs), this parameter reverts to 'False' after the next completed run. To examine the output produced, you can load the generated debug file using the File Observer. Optional
Observer job description Enter additional information to describe the job Optional
Job schedule Specify when the job runs Optional. Load jobs only.

SevOne Observer job parameters for v2load job

Parameter Action Details
Unique ID Enter a unique name for the job Required
Hostname Enter the SevOne hostname Required
Data Tenant Specify the data tenant used for the device group or groups. Required
Username Specify the SevOne username Required
Password Specify the SevOne password Required. Use plain text.
Device group path Specify the device group path to be discovered. To discover more than one group, enter a comma-separated list. Required
Number of SevOne hops Choose the number of hops to be discovered Required. Default is 2, maximum hops is 3.
HTTPS enabled Select true to enable HTTPS connection. If true, you must also provide the target system certificate. Required
Connectivity type Select one of the following topology relationship types: host (creates a direct host-to-host topology relationship), or network interface (creates a relationship between the hosts' network interfaces) Required
Pagination limit Enter a value between 50 and 500 to set a limit for the number of records to fetch per API call. The default is 500. Optional
Model half link To enable half-link modeling, set to true. Default is false. Full links in SevOne are created only when a connection is confirmed by both ends of the link. Optional
Device entity type Select one or both of the following options. If you select both, the device will have both entity types. If you select deviceClass (the default), the entity type will be the device's class value, such as its switch or router (if not known, the entity type will be the value host instead.) If you select vendorModel, the entity type will be a combination of the device vendor and model (if unknown, the Device Class value is used as the entity type). Optional
Grouping vertex preference To use resource grouping, select hostToHost or deviceGroup, or both, or none. If none are selected, no grouping is performed. Optional
Geolocation attribute name Enter the exact name of the SevOne attribute that contains geolocation values. Default is Lat/Lon. Optional
Geolocation attribute namespace Enter the exact SevOne namespace under which the geolocation attribute resides. Defaults to Location. Optional
Latitude field name Enter the key string inside the SevOne attribute values object that holds the latitude field. The extracted value will be validated as a WGS84 latitude float (-90 to +90). Defaults to latitude. Optional
Longitude field name Enter the key string inside the SevOne attribute values object that holds the longitude field. The extracted value will be validated as a WGS84 longitude float (-180 to +180). Defaults to longitude. Optional
Custom object type names

Custom objects are discovered as child objects of devices and will be connected to their parent device in the topology.

'Interface' objects are modeled as part of the default topology.

Enter a comma-separated list to discover and model in the topology. Leave empty to skip custom object discovery.

Supports wildcards, for example:
  • gateway - exact match
  • gateway* - starts with
  • *gateway - ends with
  • *gateway* - contains
 Optional
Target system certificate Specify a certificate by name to load into the trustStore. Optional
SSL certificate hostname verification Choose whether SSL validation is on or off. Turning SSL validation off will use HTTPS without host verification. Optional
Access scope Enter text to provide a scope for the resources. Access scope can help map alerts to resources when resources in different scopes share the same parameters, such as matchTokens. Optional.
Note: You can define access scope for locations, project names, namespaces, etc.
Bulk load job Select either true or false to distribute the loading of job data more evenly across partitions. This is useful if some jobs contain substantially more data than others. The default is 'false'. Optional
Generate debug support file Set this parameter to 'True' in order to capture the output of the next scheduled job run as a file. This file will be stored with an observer's log files and can be used to debug observer issues, for example at the request of your designated support team, or while using a test environment. For one-off jobs (that is, Load jobs), this parameter reverts to 'False' after the next completed run. To examine the output produced, you can load the generated debug file using the File Observer. Optional
Observer job description Enter additional information to describe the job Optional
Job schedule Specify when the job runs Optional. Load jobs only.