How to push DCE alarms into ServiceNow

[DCIM_Support]

This question was originally posted on DCIM Support by Justen.Dimaio on 2019-03-25

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I am looking for more information on how to get alarms from DCE into ServiceNow. I came across this article but it only provides a link to the DCE documentation: 

I understand we can use WebServices to to get the alarms out of DCE, but I need help understanding how this would be configured. Would we use the SDK for this?  Any input would be appreciated. 

Thanks,

(CID:141266804)

[DCIM_Support]

This answer was originally posted on DCIM Support by Ed Tarento on 2019-03-25

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Hi Justen.  

Do you have a test / dev system with a standalone DCE & SN?  If you do not then proceed in production with extreme caution.  I've seen many attempts like these fail because the receiving system gets flood with alerts, people get emails / SMSs / or tickets to their queue and their understandable upset kills a project that had the potential to provide business benefits

Please also post a little about the business problem you're trying to solve and especially about timing and reliability requirements.  Do you want to see every DCE event in SN?  Do you want the re-arm event, e.g. "the temp is now below upper threshold"?  What can your ServiceNow ingest, receive and pull?   What do the SN people want?  What do your SN users expect and how will you communicate to them about the change to what they see?

Some ideas...

1. If ServiceNow will ingest traps/informs?, the easiest way at the DCE end is to turn on Network Management System integration.  So I'd look there first.  High risk though as you don't have very fine grained control over what gets sent.  Good choke point as it's easy to turn entire flow on and off.
   
   
2. Another option is to setup Alarm Actions in DCE for individual event types.  Much more work (for you?)  at the DCE end but less risk as per my note above.  You can slowly roll out the system event type by event type.  Sadly this option has no way to shut off the flow completely AFAIK.  If that's important to you then you might consider an intermediate trap receiver / forwarder, a single point of failure granted but a good way to stop the flow entirely if needed
   
   
3. Another option is to have SN "pull" the alarms from the DCE API.  The DCE admin will have little control over this option.
   
   

There are probably other options as well and other considerations.  I hope that helps

Kind regards

Ed

(CID:141266858)

[DCIM_Support]

This comment was originally posted on DCIM Support by Justen.Dimaio on 2019-04-05

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Ed,

 It sounds like option 2 would be the best route to take. One question, if we went with option 3, is there any way to see when the alarm is cleared via web services?

Thanks,

(CID:141271664)

[DCIM_Support]

This comment was originally posted on DCIM Support by Ed Tarento on 2019-04-07

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I guess so but if you're looking at option 2 I imagine the re-arm event will also be sent.

Cheers

Ed

(CID:141271782)

[DCIM_Support]

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