Configuring VMware NSX Observer jobs
You configure VMware NSX Observer jobs to dynamically load data from the VMware NSX REST interface. You can use the VMware NSX Observer when you have a VMware NSX appliance in your environment.
Before you begin
Important: The VMware NSX Observer supports the on-premises VMware NSX version 6.3.
Ensure you have the VMware NSX REST API details to hand, such as the VMware NSX URL, username, password, and SSL truststore.
Enabling access to the URL routes
To access the URL routes for the topology Swagger documentation, see the Enabling access to URL routes topic.
About this task
The VMware NSX Observer job extracts VMware NSX resource information through REST, and the observer loads and updates the resources and their relationships within the topology service.
You define and start the following job.
VMware NSX Observer job (full topology load) This job loads a baseline of topology data from an environment, which contains a VMware NSX appliance.
Run this job whenever you need VMware NSX 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.
The VMware NSX Observer loads the following resources and their relationship into the IBM Cloud Pak® for AIOps core topology service:
- NSX Appliance
- vCenter Appliance
- NSX Controller
- Edge Router - Logical (Distributed) Router, Edge Service Gateway
- Virtual machines
- Host
- VNIC
Procedure
Define or edit the following parameters, then click Run job to save and run the job.
Encryption requirement: See the Configuring observer jobs security topic for more information.
| Parameter | Action | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Unique ID | Enter a unique name for the job | Required |
| Data center name | Specify the data center in which the VMware NSX instance runs | Required. |
| Network Virtualization and Security Platform API URL | Specify the API URL of the VMware NSX endpoint | Required. Usually in the following format: https://[hostname or IP address]/api |
| Network Virtualization and Security Platform username | Specify the username to connect as, or listen to | Required |
| Network Virtualization and Security Platform password | Enter the password to authenticate with | Required |
| Network Virtualization and Security Platform tenant name | Specify the tenant | Optional. |
| Network Virtualization and Security Platform certificate | Specify a certificate by name to load into the truststore | Required. |
| SSL Validation | Choose whether SSL validation is on or off. Turning SSL validation off will use HTTPS without host verification. | Required |
| SSL truststore file | Specify the truststore file name. The observer generates the trust store file based on the file name provided. Tip: You can use the observer name as file name (<observer>.jks), for example VMWareNSX.jks. |
Required. The supported format is JKS and the file is relative to $ASM_HOME/security. |
| SSL truststore file password | Specify the truststore password the observer will use to decrypt the HTTPS truststore file. Use a password that conforms to your internal security requirements. | Required |
| Connection and read timeout (ms) | Enter the time at which the connection and read actions time out | Optional. Must be a value greater than 0 (zero), and the default is 5000 (5 seconds). |
| 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. |
| 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. |