Defining IBM Cloud Observer jobs

The IBM Cloud Observer is installed as part of the core installation procedure. Use the IBM Cloud Observer when you have IBM Cloud installed in your environment to define jobs that perform REST calls to the IBM Cloud REST API. These jobs retrieve Cloud Foundry Apps information and services, and then dynamically load the retrieved data for analysis by Netcool Agile Service Manager.

Important: The IBM Cloud Observer supports the cloud/SaaS IBM Cloud version.

Important: The IBM Cloud Observer supports Cloud Foundry API version 2.75.

Ensure you have the IBM Cloud access details to hand, such as username, password and region.

Remember: Swagger documentation for the observer is available at the following default location: https://<your host>/1.0/ibmcloud-observer/swagger

In a typical IBM Cloud environment, you have access to four different region:

US_S (Dallas)
UK (London)
EU (Frankfurt)
AP (Sydney & Tokyo)

You define which region is to be discovered, as IBM Cloud Observer supports all four regions.

Each region has its own URI, thus only a single region is discovered in a full load job. To discover different regions, a full load job needs to be triggered for each region. The prerequisites for a full load job are the IBM Cloud username, password and region.

Note: No listening job is supported at the moment.

Tip: You can configure IBM Cloud resources via the IBM Cloud GUI or the Cloud Foundry CLI.

ibmcloud_observer_common.sh: The config file you use to customize IBM Cloud Observer settings.; The parameters defined here are then used by the ibmcloud_observer_load_start.sh script to trigger the IBM Cloud Observer jobs.; Tip: Alternatively, you can set the appropriate environment variables. If an environment variable is set, it takes precedence over the config file settings.

You define and start the following job. You must edit the parameters in the config file before running this job.

Full Topology Upload job: A transient (one-off) job that loads all requested topology data.; This job is started by the ibmcloud_observer_load_start.sh script.

Note: The following IBM Cloud resource objects are the only supported resources types that can be discovered by the IBM Cloud Observer.

Table 1. Mapping IBM Cloud model objects to Agile Service Manager entity types
IBM Cloud resource object	Agile Service Manager entity types
stacks	operatingsystem
apps	application
routes	path
service bindings	hub
service instance	service
user provided service instance	service
spaces	group
organization	organization
buildpacks	component

To edit the parameters in the config file

Open the ibmcloud_observer_common.sh config file and edit (at least) the following parameters:
username

The user name for the IBM Cloud REST API

password

The user password for the IBM Cloud REST API
For encryption: Run the encrypt_password.sh script in the ASM_HOME/bin directory:
./bin/encrypt_password.sh
Enter and then confirm the password. The encryption utility will return an encrypted version.
region

The IBM Cloud resource region (supported region codes are US_S, UK, EU or AP)

To start the Load job

To start the IBM Cloud Observer Full Topology Upload job, use the following command:
```
$ASM_HOME/bin/ibmcloud_observer_load_start.sh
```
This job loads all requested topology data. Run this job whenever you need the IBM Cloud topology data refreshed.

You can also use the following scripts:

ibmcloud_observer_load_stop.sh: Stops the Full Topology Upload job
ibmcloud_observer_job_list.sh: Lists the status of current jobs
ibmcloud_observer_log_level.sh: Sets the log level

Remember: As an alternative to being configured using the Observer Configuration UI, observer jobs have scripts to start and stop all available jobs, to list the status of a current job, and to set its logging levels. These scripts can be run with -h or --help to display help information, and with -v or --verbose to print out the details of the actions performed by the script, including the full cURL command. For the on-prem version of Agile Service Manager, observer scripts are configured for specific jobs by editing the script configuration files.