Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) The Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy package brings together two powerful technologies to enable better tracking, faster diagnosis and reduced mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) for alerts within your Information Technology(IT) environment. By using each product s API to directly access and update their respective database systems, the integration package is able to build on the individual strengths of both products. For example, Remedy trouble tickets can be automatically generated for alerts issued by NSM agents while the NSM Management Command Center (MCC) interface can be used to track Remedy trouble tickets and directly access the alerting node s WorldView object for further trouble determination and diagnosis. The end result is more effective tracking and management of tickets to support a more rapid resolution of the source of those tickets. This document provides information on: What the integration provides How to install the integration package How to use the integration Features The integration package provides the following: Automatic generation of Remedy trouble tickets whenever a critical event message is received in the NSM Event Management Console NSM WorldView object, viewable in either the Management Command Console (MCC) or the legacy 2d map, to enable tracking and management of Remedy tickets Dynamic Business Process View (BPV) with all open Remedy tickets, organized by node Launch in context of the Remedy ticket management web application from the Remedy ticket object Display of the alerting host s object from the Remedy ticket object Automatic closure of Remedy ticket when the corresponding alerting message is corrected Ability to delete Remedy ticket object for resolved tickets from the WorldView MDB Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 1
System Requirements In order to implement the integration package, the following prerequisites must be met. Operating System The NSM Remedy integration pack is available for installation under the Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 operating systems. Product Software The integration supports the following product versions: Unicenter NSM r11.1 and above. Note that the integration package must be installed on a Unicenter NSM Event Management server Remedy version 6.0 Database The NSM Remedy integration pack will function with any DBMS supported by Unicenter NSM and Remedy. Other requirements The following additional software is required: Remedy API 6.0 Installation The integration package includes an installation wizard to enable you quickly get your system up and running and ready for use. The wizard performs many of the configuration steps needed to coordinate trouble tickets between Unicenter NSM and Remedy. It also acts as a template for expansion of its capabilities to other technologies. Following is a walk through of the installation wizard. Note: The installation wizard should autostart when installing from a CD. Otherwise, execute setup.exe in the root directory. 1. Setup first checks that prerequisites have been satisfied by verifying Unicenter NSM and the Remedy 6.0 packages are installed. 2. Once the verification completes, the Welcome screen is presented. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 2
3. Click Next to continue 4. Scroll through the End User License Agreement (EULA) and select the I Agree button. This will activate the Next button. 5. Click Next to continue 6. When prompted, provide the appropriate information on the Customer Information dialog and click Next to continue: Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 3
7. Click Next to accept the default installation path or use the Browse button to select an alternate location. 8. Provide the MDB logical name, user name and password to access the MDB. The currently active MDB will be displayed. Execute wvrepsel.exe to display other choices. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 4
The default user ID is nsmadmin but this may be changed if needed, provided the new user ID has the permission to create and delete objects. Click Test mdb connection button to verify that the credentials entered have the necessary access. Note: During installation, the password will be encrypted and stored with the other database access information in the system registry. Use the arsetpsw.exe utility to update the stored password. Click Next to proceed. 9. Provide the Remedy server, schema, user ID and password to access the Remedy database. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 5
The user ID you provide must have permission to create and update tickets in the Remedy system. The password will be encrypted and stored with other database access information in the system registry during the install. Note: Use the arsetpsw.exe utility to update the stored password. Click Next to continue. 10. Setup will retrieve a list of fields from the Remedy server and schema specified in the prior dialog. Select the fields list in the drop down combo boxes that correspond to information requested. Click Next to continue. 11. Provide the URL for the Remedy web application. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 6
This URL is used to query the Remedy database for a list of tickets for a host. Replace the specific ticket host address with &address& variable as shown in the example. This will cause the WorldView menu method to substitute the host s address (as stored in the MDB) when the View Tickets menu option is selected. 12. When prompted to proceed with the installation, verify that all information is correctly entered and click Next. The installation program will perform the following tasks: Copy files Update the registry with installation information and the encrypted database passwords Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 7
Create the NSM classes in the MDB Create and activate the Event Management policy to drive the integration Please wait while setup copies files and sets up the environment. 13. When prompted, select the checkbox to view the README file in order to familiarize yourself with the latest information regarding this utility. Although this step is optional it is highly recommended. 14. Click Finish to complete the installation. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 8
Uninstall Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy may be uninstalled either by re-executing setup from the installation image or by using the standard Windows Add\Remove Programs Control Panel function. The Maintenance Welcome dialog displays after setup initialization. The Remove option is preselected as the Modify and Repair options are inactive. Click Next to continue. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 9
This screen offers two options for additional uninstall cleanup. Selecting Remove Event Management Policy will delete all of the Event Management message records and message actions installed by this product. An opreload will not be performed in order to avoid accidentally implementing unanticipated changes in your event management policy. Do not select this option if you have performed any customization and plan to reinstall. Important! Although the Advanced Event Correlation policies will be removed from the AEC engine setup will not delete the AEC policies from the MDB. That must be done manually. Select Remove MDB classes and objects option to remove all classes and objects installed by this product. How the Integration Works Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy uses Event Management policy which can be extended and customized to suit individual site requirements. The Advanced Event Correlation (AEC) policy included in the package is used to normalize critical trap messages for caiwina3 and cailoga2 agents while contrasting NSM Event Management policy processes the critical alert resolution trap messages (Critical to Warning, OK, Repaired, etc.). AEC is considered the best practice for normalizing messages and it is highly recommended for repaired messages as well. To include additional agents, you will need to develop the necessary policies, however, you can use the supplied examples as templates and refer to the User Guide for details on the program parameters. Note: Polling messages are not included in the current policy. These messages are normally redundant to previously received traps and including them could generate creation of duplicate issues. Important! The Event Management policy included in the integration kit is provided merely as an example of what can be done. It is not intended to be all encompassing nor should it be implemented without consideration of its ramifications. Care must be taken to avoid excessive or duplicate ticket creation as determined by the requirements of your site Message Processing Example Following is an example of how messages are processed by the NSM Integration for Remedy package. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 10
As critical Agent messages arrive at the Event Management server, Advanced Event Correlation (AEC) is used to normalize selected messages into a standard format. This enables any additional messages to be incorporated into the system without adding further Event Management policy, although the new message template will need to be added to the AEC policy. The Event Management policy is also used to create the Remedy Trouble ticket and WorldView objects. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 11
The Remedy Ticket objects are displayed in two places in the WorldView MCC. First, they appear associated with the host machine issuing the alert. Then, when a dynamic Business Process View (BPV) detects that a ticket object has been created, it is also displayed under ARS Tickets BPV. This provides a convenient, orderly display of tickets to enable management at a system-wide level. Two additional options are provided on the right click menu for WorldView objects. View Host action enables display of the host object in the context of the Remedy web application. From here all of the monitoring and management tools available for the node are readily available. View Tickets launches the Remedy web application in context of the host, thereby enabling direct access to all tickets for the host so they may be updated as needed. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 12
Following is an example of a generic Remedy ticket display launched from the View Tickets option. Note that your display will vary depending on the schema you have selected during the installation process. When a message is received correcting the alerting message (warning, normal, ok, or repaired messages), Event Management policy searches for the matching WorldView object, deletes it and alters the Remedy ticket status to resolved. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 13
The following example shows the ticket has now been closed in Remedy: Creating New Policy The Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy package exposes the ARSCreate.exe, ARSAddTicket.exe and ARSlvTicket.exe user commands which control the creation and closing of Remedy tickets and WorldView objects. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 14
The ARSCreate.exe command is used to create new tickets in the BMC Remedy database. It requires the following positional parameters: Hostname the name of the agent host machine triggering the alert Classname the agent instance class name as found in the console message. For example, in the following message the classname would be token 5 or WinA3_LVolInst. Host:Windows_NetServer Windows_NetServer caiwina3 Trap WinA3_LVolInst OK Critical C: Prop Size Val 31206.496094 81.82% Warn 1906.932617 5% Crit 20976.258789 55% Total 38138.652344 100% Lag 1 Interval 300 Description A brief description of the problem. This will be stored in the Remedy database Short Description field (or an equivalent field selected during the install). In the default policy this is presented as the alerting instance. For example, C: in the message above, appended with Critical Alert. Problem Code This value is stored in the Remedy database Problem Code (or equivalent field selected during the install). The value specified in the default policy is CAREQ_A. You may also include as many additional parameters as needed (subject to the Windows command line limit of 8192 characters). Additional parameters are expressed as semicolon (;) separated triplets with the following format. fieldid;ar_data_type;value where: Fieldid is the Remedy ARS schema field ID. AR_Data_Type specifies the Remedy ARS data type. For example, AR_DATA_TYPE_CHAR, AR_DATA_TYPE_INTEGER, or AR_DATA_TYPE_DIARY. Value is the value to be placed in the field. Enclose the value in quotes ( ) if it contains embedded blanks. To implement additional parameters you will need to modify the Event Management Message Action that executes ARSCreate.exe. ARSCreate Debugging Options ARSCreate.exe version 1.0.5 and above includes a rudimentary debug option. This option is intended for one off debugging and not for production processing. To utilize this option include the key word debug as the first of the additional parameters. The arscreate.log file will be created in the %TEMP% directory. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 15
If you are concerned that the password stored in the registry may not be decrypted correctly, the debug option will check it for you. To use this facility, pass the password as the second token of the semicolon separated debug triplet as follows: Debug;password The password will display as part of the command line but will not be displayed in the log. Only a confirmation message will be displayed. This debug option will document flow through ARSCreate.exe. To examine the results of Remedy processing set the environment variable ARAPILOGGING=2. This will generate 2 log files arapicmd.log and arapires.log in the current directory. For commands executed through Event Management you should find the files in the ~\CCS\WVEM directory. Important! This is a general debug option and should not be utilized in a production environment. Use the ARSAddTicket.exe command to create new ticket objects in the NSM MDB. This command requires the following parameters. Note that command line arguments are specified as -<flag><value> with no intervening space. For example: -a111.111.111.111 The supported parameters include: -h the name of the agent host machine triggering the alert -a - IP address of the agent host machine -c - class name of the agent host machine -t Remedy ticket number returned by ARSCreate.exe -m short description stored in the MDB ticket object -d (optional) set this parameter to 1 or higher to display debug messages Use the ARSRslvTicket.exe command to close tickets in the Remedy database and remove MDB ticket objects. This command also checks to see if the tickets folder is empty and deletes that as well. Command line arguments are specified as -<flag><value> with no intervening space. For example: -s2 Enclose the value in quotes ( ) if it contains embedded blanks. The supported parameters include: -h - the name of the machine triggering the alert -s sets the Remedy ticket status code (2 or closed by default) Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 16
-d (optional) set this parameter to 1 or higher to display debug messages (it is recommended that this flag be first in order so the contents of other flags are included in debug information) -c alerting property in the alert repaired message that will be used to match the ticket_desc ILP of the ticket object. For example, in the following message it is token 8 C:. Host:Windows_NetServer Windows_NetServer caiwina3 Poll WinA3_LVolInst Critical Warning C: ARSRslvTicket.exe uses the c parameter to match the ARSTicket ticket_desc ILP. The value in ticket_desc is initiated by the m parameter which is passed to ARSCreate.exe by the Message Action that executes ARSCreate.exe. Although this value is completely arbitrary the value specified here must be resolved by the ARSRslvTicket.exe m parameter in order for ticket number resolution to occur. For example, in the message example under ARSCreate.exe above, the alerting attribute is C:. The Event Management policy appends Critical Alert to this and passes C: Critical Alert to ARSCreate.exe. This string is passed to ARSAddTicket.exe as the m parameter which sets it in the ticket_desc ILP. The message action resolving the alert must pass at least a segment of the ticket_desc string in order for ARSRslvTicket.exe to retrieve the ARS ticket number to be closed. Unicenter NSM Integration for Remedy (v 1.0.5) Page 17