Configuring ITNM Observer jobs

Using the IBM Tivoli Network Manager (ITNM) Observer, you can define jobs that dynamically load data discovered by Network Manager for analysis by Netcool Agile Service Manager.

Before you begin

Important: The ITNM Observer supports the on-premise ITNM version 4.2.

Ensure you have the IBM Tivoli Network Manager service details to hand, such as the domain, host and port number.

The ITNM Observer is installed as part of the core installation procedure.

Tip:

You can create custom tags on IBM Tivoli Network Manager, which the ITNM Observer can integrate into Agile Service Manager tags. For information on creating custom tags in Network Manager, see the Adding name-value pairs to entities using the File finder topic in the IBM Tivoli Network Manager IP Edition documentation.

Having added a custom tag in Network Manager, you can extract the value into an Agile Service Manager tag. The following example uses a regular expression to extract the value of the `Country` custom tag:

customtags=~/[\\{ ]Country=(.+?)[,\\}]/

About this task

The ITNM Observer jobs extract Network Manager resources using an Object Query Language JDBC driver. The Observer loads and updates the resources and their relationships within the Agile Service Manager core topology service.

You configure the following two jobs.

Load: A transient (one-off) job that queries Network Manager for topology data, and performs a complete upload for a single ITNM domain.; 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.; For cross-domain connections: Each ITNM domain must read existing cross-domain connections from the topology service, which means that you may need to run two observations of all domains contributing cross-domain connections (that is, run the full load job twice) before all cross-domain edges are created.
Listen: A long-running job that monitors the Network Manager message bus for changes and update the topology service accordingly. When the job is started, the observer creates an OQL connection that listen for changes in the ITNM network. Any resources added, changed or deleted are passed on by the OQL connection and the Agile Service Manager topology service is updated.; The listen job runs until it is explicitly stopped, or until the observer is stopped.

Tip (ITNM port): The value of port will vary if multiple domains exist. To identify which port is associated with a specific domain in your Network Manager host, open the $NCHOME/etc/precision/ServiceData.cfg file and locate the line that specifies which ncp_config service binds to the domain, for example:

SERVICE: ncp_config DOMAIN: NCOMS ADDRESS: 172.17.0.4 PORT: 7968 SERVERNAME: core.ibm.com DYNAMIC: NO

The port identified in this example is 7968 (while the domain is NCOMS, and the host (ITNM Server IP) is 172.17.0.4).

Tip (edge type mapping): To identify topology relationship types, see the following file: $NCHOME/precision/disco/stitchers/DNCIM/PopulateDNCIMTopologies.stch
Alternatively, run the following OQL statement against the model service to list the available topology types:

select ENTITYNAME from ncimCache.entityData where METACLASS='Topology'

Procedure

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 ITNM Observer tile.

Choose either load or listen from the Job type drop-down.

Configure the following parameters, then click Save to save your job and begin retrieving information:

Table 1. ITNM Observer **load** and **listen** job parameters
Parameter	Action	Details
Unique ID	Enter a unique name for the job	Required
ITNM instance name	Specify the ITNM instance name.	Required. Specify the same instance name for all jobs to enable connectivity across domains.
ITNM domain	Specify the ITNM domain.	Required
Hostname or Server IP	Specify the ITNM host name or server IP on which the domain is running.	Required
ITNM domain port	Specify the ITNM port for the specified domain.	Required. For more information, see Tip (ITNM port).
OQL connection timeout (ms)	Specify the OQL Connection timeout value.	Optional. The default is 3000 (30 seconds).
Exclude resources without connections	Select whether to display disconnected resources.	Optional. The choices are true and false. The default is true.
Edge Type Map	Map ITNM layers to topology relationship types.	Optional This parameter accepts the default or custom Agile Service Manager edge types. For custom edge types, register the edge in the topology service Swagger under the `POST /types/edge` API. If left blank, Agile Service Manager will auto-map. For more information, see the edge type mapping tip.
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.