Event Integration From 3rd-party Monitoring Tools - Part 4: Msend API execution

After installing msend API package and successfully testing the communication between your 3rd-party monitoring software server and your BPPM/BEM cell, you are ready to call msend from your 3rd-party monitoring software.

In your 3rd-party monitoring software, first locate where you can configure an OS script when an alert is raised.  Usually you will need to specify a condition (such as a specific severity or a specific component) and the name of an OS script.

Although you can directly call msend by using 'msend' as your OS script name, I recommend that you create a separate OS script (e.g. call_msend).  Your 3rd-party monitoring software will call this OS script when an alert is raised.  Then this OS script will call msend.  This way you can set the environment to execute msend inside your OS script without having to merge msend environment variables into your 3rd-party monitoring software environment - which would often require you to restart your 3rd-party monitoring software.  In addition, you can unit test your OS script separately without having to wait for an alert to happen.

Second, decide which system variables (also called micros in some 3rd-party monitoring software) you would like to send to BPPM/BEM cell. These system variables contain the values of hostname, component name, parameter name, parameter value, etc. from the raised alert. The values of these system variables will be used when BPPM/BEM cell sends a notification email or creates an incident ticket.  You will configure these system variables as arguments to your OS script.

Third, construct your OS script. In the script, set up environment to execute msend, use buffer mode (-j) for guaranteed delivery, and decide to send events from command line or a text file. Examples of sending events in buffer mode, sending events from command line, and sending events from a text file were listed in the previous post "Event Integration From 3rd-party Monitoring Tools - Part 3: Msend API Configuration".

Sending events from command line is a little faster than sending events from a text file because no file I/O is involved, but sending events from a text file is easier for trouble shooting since you can keep each text file as a sender's log.  If you do choose to send events from a text file, make sure that you always use a unique file name for each event.  You can delete the text file immediately after sending the event or manually delete them later when you no longer need them for trouble shooting purpose.

In the next post, we will discuss mapping and conversion when using msend API.