How  to  integrate  DASH  into  your  IBM  Bluemix  service  management  toolchain    

1. Introduction In this guide, we cover the set up of DASH in the middle of the service management toolchain and demonstrate the interaction of DASH with the other components of the toolchain.

Note: We will not cover standard installation and operation of DASH, since this is not unique to the IBM® Bluemix® environment. Instead, we will provide links to references.

1.1. Features  of  IBM  Dashboard  Applica9on  Services  Hub  IBM Dashboard Application Services Hub (DASH) provides visualization and dashboard services. It is one of the features from the IBM® Jazz™ for Service Management Suite. It has a single console for administering IBM products and related applications. Robust integration platform DASH provides a web-based, systems-management integration platform that supports:

• Data processing and rendering of content from multiple sources, which is integrated and presented in interactive dashboards

• Multiple user personas, for example, system integrators, administrators, users, and application developers • Single sign-on and a unified security model

Highly customizable

1. Introduction 1.1. Features of IBM Dashboard Application Services Hub

2. Solution overview 2.1. Service management architecture overview

3. How to use DASH 3.1. Manually dealing with an incoming event 3.2. Customizing dashboards

3.2.1.Application views 3.2.2.Embedded HTML pages

4. Prerequisites for setup 5. Configure integrations in DASH

5.1. New Relic integration 5.1.1.Impact Policy - GetNewRelicScript 5.1.2.Shell script on the impact server - newrelic.sh

5.2. New Relic table widget in DASH 5.2.1.Add launch into NewRelic

6. Conclusion

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Dashboard creation in DASH allows users with appropriate permissions to create dashboards using a self-service console. You can arrange widgets to be dynamically displayed in proportion to their size. Also, you can arrange multiple widgets on the dashboard in a flexible and proportional manner. In the same manner, DASH supports fluid dashboard creation where users with appropriate permissions can create dashboards using a self-service palette. Widgets are dynamically rearranged depending on the available screen size. This type of dashboard is suitable for mobile devices, including tablets and smart phones. Enhanced UI experience Intuitive icons in DASH access non-core customization, administration, and user management tasks, which creates a bigger area for displaying user content. DASH eliminates siloes of product consoles that require users to move between separate applications to carry out service management tasks. You can move from one application to another within the same dashboard view and drill down into different aspects of their managed enterprise. DASH meets the standards for an IBM One UI and provides a number of user assistance paths, including:

• A Welcome page that offers a tour of the UI, with shortcuts to common administrative tasks, such as creating pages or managing user roles.

• Configuration and administration pages with inline user assistance and online help. • Direct links to the Dashboard community at Service Management Connect community.

2. Solution overview

2.1. Service  management  architecture  overview  

Cloud-based applications must be available all the time to meet the demands of business. Cloud service management and operations refers to the entirety of activities that are performed by an organization to plan, design, deliver, operate, and control IT and cloud services offered to customers. Incident and problem management must be included to respond to outages, but change, release, and configuration management are also included to assure seamless deployment and release of new versions.

Review the Cloud Service Management Reference Architecture in the IBM Cloud Architecture Center to understand the components and runtime flow.

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Figure 1. System context diagram for DASH (Netcool Operations Insights)

Figure 1 shows the deep dive of DASH (NOI), its various components, and various integrated tools for incident management and their interactions. It’s important to note that the solution supports a heterogeneous mixture of products and solutions, each feeding or being fed by the central NOI solution.

In this document, NOI refers to an entire event management solution which includes collection components, management components, and a presentation component. DASH is NOI's presentation component and is also capable of aggregating information from multiple sources (NOI, APM, New Relic, custom HTML, and the like) and displaying the information in multiple formats to create useful dashboards.

The following flow describes the setup and operations of this solution in an overall cloud service management space: 1. Bluemix applications and infrastructure are monitored by various IBM and third-party solutions. Public, Dedicated

and Local Bluemix instances are monitored, but each supports a different array of monitoring solutions. The various dedicated monitoring solutions forward their events to omnibus probes. IBM Monitoring and Analytics service, New Relic, or Bluemix RSS/JSON uses email probe to connect to NOI. IBM Application Performance Monitor as a Service (IBM APMaaS) uses NOI’s EIF probe.

2. The probes normalize the events into a common format and send them to the central omnibus. The monitoring events sent to NOI via these probes are then correlated, de-duplicated, analyzed, and enriched. Further action may be automated or performed by a first responder, incident owner, or runbook automated service.

3. The Impact component has two roles. It extracts events from the Bluemix infrastructure and forwards events on to the collaboration and notification solutions. The analytics component of NOI enriches the events and finds correlations

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between events, limiting the number of alarms forwarded and making sure that important issues are prioritized. The dashboards are used to both display events and to manually forward them if an operator decides to do so.

4. The correlated events are forwarded to collaboration and notification tools. Action may be performed to solve the issues detected.

5. Runbooks connected to NOI are automated to update the event status based on the resolution of the issue. The status updates can also be manually handled within NOI. It also has capability to have bidirectional communication with notification tool so that event status update can take place in either tool. This updated status is then propagated instantly to notification or collaboration tool.

6. DASH communicates with Impact to pull back status information from various IBM and third-party tools by executing Impact Policies to extract and format the data for DASH.

3. How to use DASH You can operate DASH through a web-based GUI. The login is: https://<yourServer>:16311/ibm/console

! Figure 2. DASH login screen  

3.1. Manually  dealing  with  an  incoming  event  

After login, access the list of active events through the Incident > Event Viewer menu.

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Figure 3. Event viewer screen  

Use the filter to control the list of displayed events. For instance, you can filter the results related to a specific application or a specific time frame.

Use the View to control the format of the list. The Integrations view displays the status of upstream integrations with Pager Duty and Slack. You can create other views to show different displays, depending on your specific requirements.

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Figure 4. Select an integrations view  

After selecting the Integrations view, you can see which critical events have been forwarded to Pager Duty and Slack. You can also see which Slack channel has been updated. You can select whether events are forwarded automatically when they are first reported or whether they are forwarded manually by operators.

More information about the integrations provided with the Netcool NOI Suite can be found in: How to Guide for Netcool Operations Insights for Bluemix.

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Figure 5. Forward events to PagerDuty or Slack  

Select Launch Event Link to launch into the monitoring application's website for further details of the event.

3.2. Customizing  dashboards  DASH enables a wide variety of customizations, and you can create your own dashboards to view the events based on incidents, applications, and embedded HTML pages.

For further information. you can read the documentation in the IBM Knowledge Center. Visit https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEKCU_1.1.2.1/com.ibm.psc.doc/use/tip_c_use.html and https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSSHTQ_8.1.0/com.ibm.netcool_OMNIbus.doc_8.1.0/webtop/wip/task/web_cust_devcusteventdisplays.html

The following are a number of sample customizations:

3.2.1.Applica9on  views  

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Figure 6. Filtered events by application

The left side of Figure 4 shows a list of applications and services. When you select an application or service from that list, the right side of the panel shows a filtered event list of only the events affecting the selected application or service.

3.2.2.Embedded  HTML  pages  

With DASH, you can embed other HTML pages into the DASH views to create a more customized view on your dashboard.

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Figure 7. Bluemix system status

Figure 7 shows an example of a dashboard that has embedded other HTML pages into the view.

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The HTML pages can be embedded as widgets of type "web widget" or "inline frame". See the standard DASH documentation for further instructions.

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Figure 8. Bluemix status as a table

Figure 8 shows the same information as in the embedded page, but as a table which can be formatted in DASH.

Once you configure your integrations, you can start customizing dashboard views to represent your management data from a single view in DASH.

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Figure 9. Integrated application view

Figure 9 shows how you can combine data from New Relic into your dashboard view.

4. Prerequisites for setup You need the following components of Netcool Operations Insight / Omnibus for toolchain integration. Refer to the How to Guide for Netcool Operations Insights for Bluemix for information about installation and configuration.

5. Configure integrations in DASH To configure the integrations, log in to DASH, and select Integrations > Integration Configuration. Note: You must be an administrator to access this page. Refer to the How to Guide for Netcool Operations Insights for Bluemix for steps to configure Netcool Operations Insights integrations.

Component Purpose

ObjectServer Central repository of monitoring events, includes triggers for high-performance automated responses

Probes (email, message bus, EIF, syslogd)

Integration points with downstream ITSM products such as APM and New Relic. They communicate with the probe, and the probe updates the ObjectServer.

Jazz for Service Management / DASH

Dashboard or UI for operators and other stakeholders to observe and respond to events affecting their business services and applications

Impact Enrichment and automation component, used for upstream integration with PagerDuty and Slack

NOI Analytics Add-on or plugin for the ObjectServer and DASH to provide analytical capabilities

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5.1. New  Relic  integra9on  New Relic is a monitoring solution and is one of the options to monitor Bluemix applications. To set up your New Relic system, refer to the How to Guide for New Relic for Bluemix. This how-to guide assumes that New Relic is set up and is already monitoring your system.

Load the following policy into your Impact system and then you can use it to pull New Relic data into your dashboard.

5.1.1.Impact  Policy  -­‐  GetNewRelicScript  

Use the following Impact Policy to get New Relic data: Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> Entering policy");// Log(CurrentContext()); // Call JRExecAction and pass the name of the command// the input parameters and a timeout valueMyResult = {}; applications = {}; applicationID = {}; applicationName = {}; applicationHealth = {}; newRelicApplID = {}; newRelicApplName ={}; newRelicApplHealth = {}; newRelicAppls = {}; Command = "/home/ibmcloud/bin/newrelic.sh";Parameters = {"getApps", "", ""}; TimeOut = 5; MyResult = JRExecAction(Command, Parameters, false, TimeOut);// Output Values: // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> ExecOut: "+ExecOutput);// Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> ExitCode: "+ExitCode);// Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> MyResults = " + MyResult);

jsonObj = ParseJSON(""+ MyResult); applications=jsonObj.applications; // x=Length(applications) // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> Arrary.Length = " + x);i=0; while (i < Length(applications)) { Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> " + i + ".id = " + applications[i].id); Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> " + i + ".name = " + applications[i].name); Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> " + i + ".status = " + applications[i].health_status); Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> " + i + ".threshold = " +

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applications[i].settings.app_apdex_threshold); Obj = NewObject(); Obj.applicationID = applications[i].id; Obj.applicationName = applications[i].name; Obj.applicationColor = applications[i].health_status; getApplicationStatus = 0; if (applications[i].health_status == 'red') { getApplicationStatus = 6; } if (applications[i].health_status == 'yellow') { getApplicationStatus = 3; } if (applications[i].health_status == 'gray') { getApplicationStatus = 1; } Obj.applicationStatus = Int(getApplicationStatus); newRelicAppls = newRelicAppls + Obj; i = i + 1; } // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> All = " + newRelicAppls); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> jsonObj = " + jsonObj);// Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> ID1 = " + newRelicAppls[1].applicationID); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> ID1 = " + newRelicAppls[1].applicationName); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> ID1 = " + newRelicAppls[1].applicationColor); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> ID1 = " + newRelicAppls[1].applicationStatus); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: ==============> Name1 = " + newRelicApplName); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: Retrieved " + Length(newRelicApplID) + " newRelicApplIDs");// Log("GetNewRelicApps: Retrieved " + Length(newRelicApplName) + " newRelicApplNames"); // Log("GetNewRelicApps: Retrieved " + Length(newRelicApplHealth) + " newRelicApplHealths"); Log("END of GetNewRelicApps");

5.1.2.Shell  script  on  the  impact  server  -­‐  newrelic.sh  

Use the following shell script to get data from the New Relic Server for the Impact Policy – GetNewRelicScript:

#! /bin/sh # #set –x if [ ".$1" == ".getApps" ]; then if [ ".$2" == ".xml" ]; then /usr/bin/curl -X GET 'https://api.newrelic.com/v2/applications.xml' -H 'X-Api-Key:<YourAPIKeyHere>' -i | sed 1,14d else /usr/bin/curl -X GET 'https://api.newrelic.com/v2/applications.json' -H 'X-Api-Key:<YourAPIKeyHere>' -i | sed 1,14d fi # > /tmp/newrelic_script_${get_time}.out

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# sed '1,14d' /tmp/newrelic_script_${get_time}.out # rm -f /tmp/newrelic_script_$(get_time).out echo "" exit 0 fi

5.2. New  Relic  table  widget  in  DASH  

To create the New Relic applications table in DASH as shown in figure 7, follow these steps: 1. In DASH, select Create a Page or Edit a Page. 2. Drag a new table widget to your page.

3. Configure the dataset source to call and execute your Impact Policy.

! Figure 10. Call and execute your Impact Policy  

4. Under Visualization Options, select the columns you want to display in your table.

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! Figure 11. Select columns for display  

5. To make the applicationStatus display a color, select applicationStatus and then click Configure Column Rendering for the column.

6. Select Map to Icons.

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7. On the Configure Column Rendering view, configure the styling to the following values for each color.

For each color you want to display, choose the relevant values which will change the color. For example, all events with a status of 3 (Warning) or higher will be marked yellow while 6 (Critical) or higher will be marked red. Note that the list of options is processed from top to bottom and stops at the first match.

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! Figure 12. Configure color style  

8. Select OK to save your table widget.

Your new table widget should look something like this:

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Figure 13. New table widget  

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Further information can be found at https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEKCU_1.1.2.1/com.ibm.psc.doc/tip_original/dash_c_twl_table_use.html

5.2.1.Add  launch  into  NewRelic  

To add the launch into NewRelic, follow these steps: 1. Drag a hotspot widget to your page with the NewRelic applications on it. 2. Add a hover tooltip; in this example, the tooltip is Launch into NewRelic. 3. Set action to: Open Web Page. 4. Set the URL to: https://rpm.newrelic.com/accounts/<YourAccountID>/applications 5. Select OK to save your Hotspot Widget.

6. Select Save and Exit to save your page.

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Now your NewRelic applications should look something like this:

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Figure 14. NewRelic applications view  

6. Conclusion After reading this document, you should have a better idea about how to set up Netcool Operations Insight into your service management toolchain for your applications. For more information about installing the DASH feature of Jazz for Service Management, visit the IBM Knowledge Center at http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEKCU_1.1.3.0/com.ibm.psc.doc/install/psc_c_install.html.

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