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The new 3.4.0 Netcool Connector Feature

  • 1.  The new 3.4.0 Netcool Connector Feature

    Posted Wed July 27, 2022 03:35 PM
    Hi,


    When we were reading the Netcool OMNIbus Connector documentation we were left with more doubts than certainties.

    "A Netcool connector is available for non-production use. You can use this connector to synchronize IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps AI Manager with an existing Netcool/OMNIbus Integrations environment to view event data in the AI ​​Manager Stories and alerts dashboard."

    The link we consulted is https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cloud-pak-watson-aiops/3.4.0?topic=notes-whats-new#net_connector


    We are planning to adopt the hybrid model of integrating the on-premises environment with Watson AIOps.

    In the highlighted excerpt, the Netcool Connector must be used for the integration of the On premises Environment with the AI ​​Manager.

    How is the on-premises environment integrated with EventManager? Would it be the same Gateway considered in the hybrid model or the new Netcool Connector?

    Another question is: is the Netcool Connector a two-way connection? Are the alarms correlated by the EventManager synchronized in the on premises environment?

    Another question is about active alarm thresholds that can be handled by EventManager? Traditionally, we work with a limitation of 80k active alarms for each considered ObjectServer.

    In our environment, it is estimated to work with 150k active alarms.

    Can we consider the new Netcool Connector functionality in the integration of the On premises Environment with EventManager and later with the integration of AI Manager?

    Thanks in advance for any help.


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    Antonio Gadelha
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  • 2.  RE: The new 3.4.0 Netcool Connector Feature

    Posted Tue August 16, 2022 06:02 PM
    Hi Antonio,

    A lot of questions so let me try to address them :-)

    > How is the on-premises environment integrated with EventManager? Would it be the same Gateway considered in the hybrid model or the new Netcool Connector?

    When you say "on-premises environment", I'm going to make the assumption that you mean on-prem (vm) omnibus and impact. So the main difference here between Event Manager and AI Manager is that AI Manager has its own data store (postgres) which is its record of truth which integrates with its scalable event lifecycle (and analytics). It uses the NetCool Connector to sync data between omnibus on-prem and AI Mgr.
    On the other hand, Event Manager in a hybrid deployment uses the existing object server in omnibus as its record of truth and runs just its analytics in Event mgr. As such it also has a connection to omnibus but its built in as part of Event Mgr.

    > is the Netcool Connector a two-way connection? Are the alarms correlated by the EventManager synchronized in the on premises environment?

    Yes, the Netcool connector is a 2-way sync between on-prem omnibus and AI Mgr. However, while it syncs over all the events from on-prem, it only sends back a limited set of data. Specifically event status and data to allow the linkage of on-prem events to the corresponding alerts in AI Mgr. The goal here is really to allow a client to preserve their investment in any custom work in their on-prem but to easily take advantage of the new capabilities in AI Mgr. To this end we are making it easy to sync data from on-prem to AI Mgr, while keeping the same set of capabilities in the existing on-prem UX. All the new capabilities and analytics are available in the new AI Mgr console which is easily available by linking to in context.

    > Another question is about active alarm thresholds that can be handled by EventManager? ...

    The thresholds will depend on a number of factors including the size of the deployment, number of resources and for Event Mgr the number of analytics performed (not a factor in AI Manager). Easiest is to reach out and we can discuss specifics for your situation.

    > Can we consider the new Netcool Connector functionality in the integration of the On premises Environment with EventManager and later with the integration of AI Manager?

    Hopefully its clear from above, that the way you'd integrate would differ between Event mgr and AI Manager. In both cases though we'd be able to preserve any investment you have. Happy to chat and talk specifics for your situation.

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    Neil Boyette
    STSM, Cloud & Cognitive Software
    IBM
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