Configuring BigFix Inventory Observer jobs
You configure BigFix Inventory Observer jobs to read data from a BigFix Inventory instance through its REST APIs, and generate a topology.
Before you begin
Important: The BigFix Inventory Observer supports BigFix Inventory 9.5.0.
Before configuring a BigFix Inventory job, ensure you have the BigFix Inventory details to hand such as the BigFix Inventory URL, API token 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
You define and start the following job.
BigFix Inventory Observer job (full topology load)
Run this job whenever you need BigFix Inventory 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.
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 | Specify the data centers in which the BigFix Inventory instance runs | Required. |
| BigFix Inventory instance URL | Specify the API URL of the BigFix Inventory endpoint (including port) | Required. Usually in the following format: https://<hostname or IP address>:<port> |
| BigFix Inventory API token | Enter the BigFix token for authentication | Required. Must be encrypted. |
| HTTPS truststore file name | 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 BigFixInventory.jks. |
Required. The supported format is JKS and the file is relative to $ASM_HOME/security. |
| 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 |
| BigFix Inventory resources | Specify the resources to be discovered | Optional. Lists supported values such as software, hardware or *. If left blank, all available resources are discovered. |
| BigFix Inventory certificate | Specify the name of the certificate to be loaded into the trust store | Required |
| SSL Validation | Choose whether SSL validation is on or off. Turning off SSL validation will use HTTPS without host verification. | Optional |
| BigFix Inventory connection timeout (ms) | Enter the time at which the connection times 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. |
Troubleshooting: If you configure a BigFix Inventory Observer job, the pod for the job might not start. After you configure the job, if you view the list of all observers you might not see the BigFix Inventory Observer job (bigfixinventory-observer)
pod listed with a status of running.
If you encounter this issue, you can manually enable the job by changing the value of asm.bigfixinventoryObserver.enabled to true:
helmValuesASM:
asm.bigfixinventoryObserver.enabled: true
To change this value, you can run the following command:
oc patch asm.asm.ibm.com/aiops-topology --type=json -p '[{"op":"add","path":"/spec/helmValuesASM/asm.bigfixinventoryObserver.enabled","value":true}]'
To verify that the pod is now running, run the following command:
oc get pods | grep -i big
aiops-topology-bigfixinventory-observer-7f8c465698-gtm5p 1/1 Running 0 5m