Configuring Ciena Blue Planet Observer jobs

Using the Ciena Blue Planet Observer, you can define jobs that will gather and read all topology data from the Blue Planet MCP instance by REST API and generate a topology.

Before you begin

Important: The Ciena Blue Planet Observer supports MCP 4.0.

The Ciena Blue Planet Observer is installed as part of the core installation procedure.

Ensure you have the Ciena Blue Planet details to hand, such as API username, API password, MCP URL, MCP certificate, truststore file and truststore password.

About this task

The Ciena Blue Planet Observer has two jobs, the restapi load and websocket listen jobs.
  • When a load job is run, it loads baseline topology data through Blue Planet MCP APIs: Network Elements (constructs), EquipmentHolder, Equipment, TPE (Terminating Point Encapsulation), and FRE (Forwarding Relationship Encapsulation).
  • When a listening job is run, the observer listens to changes in resource's status from the BluePlanet MCP instance through a websocket connection.
Tip: Defining observer jobs using the UI is the same for both on-premise and OCP.
You define and start the following jobs. You must edit the parameters in the configuration file before running the jobs.
Full Topology Upload job (via restapi)
By default, these jobs are one-off, transient jobs that carry out a full upload of all requested topology data when they are triggered.
You can also run these jobs (again) manually from the Observer UI, or schedule them to run at set times when you configure them.
Websocket Listen job
A long-running job that monitors its source for updates and runs until it is explicitly stopped, or until the observer is stopped.

Procedure

  1. On the Observer jobs page, perform one of the following actions:
    To edit an existing job
    Open the List of options overflow menu next to the job and click View & edit.
    To create a new job
    Click Add a new job + and select the Ciena Blue Planet Observer tile.
    Choose either restapi full load or websocket listen from the job type drop-down.
  2. Edit the following parameters, then click Save to save your job and begin retrieving information.
    Table 1. Ciena Blue Planet Observer restapi Load job parameters
    Parameter Action Details
    Unique ID Enter a unique name for the job. Required
    Server URL The URL of the MCP server instance Required
    MCP Certificate Certificate name to load into the trust store
    Required. For more information, see Configuring observer job security.
    On-premises
    Create and store the certificate in the ASM_HOME/security directory.
    OpenShift Container Platform
    Obtain the authentication certificate by using OpenSSL and store it as a secret.
    SSL truststore file Specify the trustStore file name.
    Tip: You can use the observer name (<observer>.jks) for example cienablueplanet.jks.
    		 Required. For both on-prem and OCP, provide the JKS name, and the observer will then create the JKS file accordingly.
    SSL truststore password The password to decrypt HTTPS trust store file Required. Use plain text.
    SSL Validation Choose whether SSL validation is on or off. Turning SSL validation off will use HTTPS without host verification. Optional
    Connection timeout Sets the connection and read timeout in milliseconds Optional. Must be a value greater than 0 (zero), and the default is 5000 (5 seconds).
    Username MCP API username Required
    Password MCP API password Required. Use plain text.
    Data Center The data center the MCP instance is running in Required
    Tenant Name The tenant to use Required
    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 parameters, such as matchTokens.

    		 Optional.
    Tip: You can define access scope for locations, project names, namespaces, and so on.
    Generate debug support file
    Set the optional Generate debug support file parameter to True to capture the output of the next scheduled job run as a file. This file is 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. The file is saved to the following locations:
    On-premises
    $ASM_HOME/logs/<obs>-observer/
    On OpenShift Container Platform
    /var/log/itsm/<obs>-observer
    		 Optional
    Observer job description Enter additional information to describe the job. Optional
    Job schedule

    Specify when the job should run, and whether it should run at regular intervals.

    By default the job runs immediately, and only once.

    Optionally you can specify a future date and time for the job to run, and then set it to run at regular intervals after that.

    Optional. Transient (one-off) jobs only.

    If you set a job schedule, the run intervals must be at least 90 seconds apart. If you set them at less than 15 minutes, a warning is displayed, as the frequency can impact system performance.
    Table 2. Ciena Blue Planet Observer Websocket Listen job parameters
    Parameter Action Details
    Unique ID Enter a unique name for the job. Required
    Websocket URL The MCP websocket URL to connect to Required
    Websocket Topics Subscriptions The MCP topics to subscribe to Required
    Server URL The URL of the MCP server instance Required
    MCP Certificate Certificate name to load into the trust store
    Required. For more information, see Configuring observer job security.
    On-premises
    Create and store the certificate in the ASM_HOME/security directory.
    OpenShift Container Platform
    Obtain the authentication certificate by using OpenSSL and store it as a secret.
    SSL truststore file Exact HTTPS trust store file name Required. The supported format is JKS and the file is relative to $ASM_HOME/security
    SSL truststore password The password to decrypt HTTPS trust store file Required. Use plain text.
    SSL Validation Choose whether SSL validation is on or off. Turning SSL validation off will use HTTPS without host verification Optional
    Connection timeout Sets the connection and read timeout in milliseconds Optional. Must be a value greater than 0 (zero), and the default is 5000 (5 seconds).
    Username MCP API username Required
    Password MCP API password Required. Use plain text.
    Data Center The data center the MCP instance is running in Required
    Tenant Name The tenant to use Required
    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 parameters, such as matchTokens.

    		 Optional.
    Tip: You can define access scope for locations, project names, namespaces, and so on.
    Generate debug support file
    Set the optional Generate debug support file parameter to True to capture the output of the next scheduled job run as a file. This file is 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. The file is saved to the following locations:
    On-premises
    $ASM_HOME/logs/<obs>-observer/
    On OpenShift Container Platform
    /var/log/itsm/<obs>-observer
    		 Optional
    Observer job description Enter additional information to describe the job. Optional
    Job schedule

    Specify when the job should run, and whether it should run at regular intervals.

    By default the job runs immediately, and only once.

    Optionally you can specify a future date and time for the job to run, and then set it to run at regular intervals after that.

    Optional. Transient (one-off) jobs only.

    If you set a job schedule, the run intervals must be at least 90 seconds apart. If you set them at less than 15 minutes, a warning is displayed, as the frequency can impact system performance.
    SSL requirements: To acquire SSL certificates and build SSL truststores, use the relevant instructions in the following section: Configuring observer job security