CA Configuration Automation / CA CMDB Integration (Catalyst-based)

Transcription

1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS CA Configuration Automation / CA CMDB Integration (Catalyst-based) The CA Configuration Automation and CA CMDB integration allows you to extract key configuration information from CA Configuration Automation (CCA) and store it in the CA CMDB module of CA Service Desk Manager (SDM) on a scheduled or ad-hoc basis. The integration is built on CA Catalyst, a common interface supporting the unification of data between CA Technologies and third-party products. CA Configuration Automation and CA SDM each have a CA Catalyst connector, which facilitates the exchange of configuration item (CI) and CI relationship data between the two products. Last Updated April 29, 2013 Questions on the following topics are discussed in this FAQ: System Requirements... 1 Install and Uninstall... 5 Exporting... 7 Troubleshooting System Requirements Where can I obtain a copy of the Catalyst components? There are several components that will be needed in order to complete this integration here is a guide to help guide you to where you can find the various components. The latest and preferred release of the CA Catalyst Server 3.2 installer is located on the CA Configuration Automation 12.7 install media. 1 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

2 The latest and preferred release of the CA Catalyst Container 3.2 is also located on the CA Configuration Automation 12.7 install media. This same Container installer can be used in conjunction with both the CA Configuration Automation Connector and the CA Service Desk Manager Connector. The CA Configuration Automation Connector is also included on the CA Configuration Automation 12.7 install media. The CA Service Desk Manager Connector is available for download from the Service Desk Manager Solution and Patches page on The site can be accessed directly by clicking here. The Service Operations Insight IFW Proxy is available for download from the Service Operations Insight Connector, Solutions & Patches page on The site can be accessed directly by clicking here. There are two different versions of the CA Service Desk Manager Catalyst Connector, 3.1 and 3.2, what are the differences? The Catalyst 3.2 connector allows Service Desk Manager to integrate with CA Configuration Automation 12.6 SP1 and CA Configuration Automation 12.7 as well as Service Operations Insight 3.0 and 3.1 (SOI), while the Catalyst 3.1 connector only allows integration to CCA Additionally the Catalyst 3.1 connector is not certified for use with Service Desk Manager What OS versions does the integration support? The integration is only supported on Windows: Windows 2003, 2008 (32 and 64 bit). What version of CA Service Desk Manager does the integration support? The Catalyst 3.1 connector supports both CA Service Desk Manager 12.5 and The Catalyst 3.2 connector supports CA Service Desk Manager 12.5, 12.6 and Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

3 Can I use a localized release of Service Desk Manager with this integration? The CA Service Desk Manager connector is currently only designed for use with an English language release of CA Service Desk Manager. Usage of the CA Service Desk Manager Connector with a non-english installation of CA Service Desk Manager is not supported. What version of CA Catalyst is certified with the Integration? CA Catalyst Server versions 3.1 and 3.2 support this integration. Please be aware that you must use the Catalyst connectors that correlate with the version of Catalyst server you are using. I currently am using the 2.5 version of the Catalyst Container to integrate Service Desk Manager with CA Spectrum Service Assurance (SSA)\CA Service Operations Insight (SOI). Can I also integrate my CA Service Desk environment with CA Configuration Automation? If you wish to integrate Service Desk Manager with both SOI and CCA you must use version 3.2 of the Catalyst connector. Catalyst 3.1 will not allow integration with SOI. Please review the CA Service Desk Manager and CA Service Operations Insight Integration.PDF that comes bundled with the Service Desk Manager 3.2 Catalyst Connector for additional information on the SOI integration. Please refer to the certified matrix on the following page to determine which version of each product will be required for your environment. 3 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

4 Service Desk Manager Catalyst Connector Matrix *The IFW Connector is required for SOI integration 4 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

5 Install and Uninstall What Catalyst components are required for the integration? If you are using Catalyst 3.1 it is required that you install Catalyst Server 3.1, and then install the Service Desk Manager 3.1 Connector. If you are using Catalyst 3.2 it is required that you install Catalyst Server 3.2, and then install the Catalyst Container on the Service Desk Manager server, followed by the Service Desk Manager Connector. Please be aware in Catalyst 3.1 the Catalyst Container and the Service Desk Manager Connector were bundled into a single installer. In Catalyst 3.2 the two components are separate installs During installation of the CA Configuration Automation and SDM Connectors, I must enter a Node Name on the Catalyst Container Server Configuration panel. What do I enter as the Node Name? The Node Name should be the host name of the machine on which you installing the connector. For example, if you are installing the SDM Connector on ServerA, then you would enter ServerA as the Node Name. After installing the integration, I noticed that I have three different application instances in the Embedded Entitlement Manager (EEM) for the integration (i.e., CATALYST-<CatalystServer>, CATALYST-<CCAConnectorServer>, CATALYST-<SDMConnectorServer>). Is this correct? No, there should only be one application instance for the integration within EEM. When installing the connectors, you must enter the same application name that was used during the CA Catalyst installation (CATALYST-<CatalystServer>). If, after installing your connectors, you have multiple application instances for the integration in EEM, you must uninstall the connectors following the instructions given in the Uninstall the CA Configuration Automation Connector and Uninstall the SDM Connector sections of the CA CDMB r12.6 and CA Configuration Automation r12.6 Integration Guide. Next, you will need to unregister the extraneous application instances from EEM using the following steps: 1. Log into the EEM UI, choosing the <Global> application instance: 2. Select the Configure tab, followed by the Applications sub-menu option. 5 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

6 3. From the list of Application in the left hand pane, click on the name of the application instance added by the CA Configuration Automation or CA SDM connector. 4. In the right-hand pane, click Unregister. 5. Repeat for any other incorrect application instances. 6. Log out of EEM. Once the above steps are completed, you can reinstall the connectors, making sure to use the same application instance name used during the CA Catalyst installation. I have completed the CA Configuration Automation (or CA SDM) Connector install, but now that I log into the CA Catalyst Registry server, I do not see the new node under topology/physical. What can cause this? When installing a CA Catalyst Connector, you are required to enter the server name, username and password to authenticate to the Catalyst server. If the account is unable to authenticate, the installation will fail. However, it may appear as if the installation completed successfully. The current release does not have the ability to perform a preinstall authentication check, so the installation will continue even if the information is incorrect. It is not possible to adjust the username and password after the Connector has been installed, so to correct this problem, you must first uninstall the CA Catalyst Connector from the server and reinstall again using the correct login information. Instructions for uninstalling the connectors are available in the Uninstall the CA Configuration Automation Connector and Uninstall the SDM Connector sections of the CA CDMB r12.6 and CA Configuration Automation r12.6 Integration Guide. After uninstalling a connector, I still see references to that connector within CA Catalyst. Was the uninstall process incomplete? There are post-installation steps that you must complete. Whenever a CA Catalyst container is started, it keeps a list of peer nodes in CA Catalyst registry and locally. When you uninstall a connector, the container uninstall does not remove the peer node entries. This is a known issue. You must follow all the steps listed in the CA CDMB r12.6 and CA Configuration Automation r12.6 Integration Guide under the sections Uninstall the CA Configuration Automation Connector and Uninstall the CA SDM Connector. 6 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

7 When installing the CA SDM Connector, I noticed there was an option to Enable TWA. What does this option do? Why would I use it? When the Enable TWA option is selected, CIs are imported into a staging location within CA SDM called the Transaction Work Area (TWA) instead of directly into the CMDB. This allows you to vet the data (remove or modify) before the CIs are loaded into the CMDB. After reviewing the CIs, you would be responsible for transferring the CIs to the CMDB using the GRLoader import utility. This approach gives you much more control over which CIs are stored in the CMDB, but it is also a more manual and time-consuming method. Exporting How do I export CIs from CA Configuration Automation? There are two ways to export CIs from CA Configuration Automation. The first way is to execute a CA Catalyst Job. To configure a job, you must log into the CCA UI and navigate to Jobs sub-menu option on Catalyst Integration tab within the Administration section. From the Catalyst Jobs table, click on Table Actions and select Create Catalyst Job. The second way is to run an integration-enabled Management Profile. To enable the integration within a Management Profile, you must create a new Management Profile or edit an existing profile. On the Profile tab, in the Catalyst Integration, check the Enable Integration option and select an Attribute Profile. Save the Management Profile and run it. What is the best method of pushing the data from CA Configuration Automation into CA Catalyst (and ultimately CA CMDB) using Management Profiles or Catalyst Jobs? The Catalyst jobs in CA Configuration Automation give you more control over the data entering the CMDB. When you define a Catalyst Job, you select exactly which services/servers and blueprints to export. When using Management Profiles, any service/server assigned to the integration-enabled management profile will be exported and any blueprints configured within the profile will also be exported. When exporting CIs from CA Configuration Automation, do all chosen CIs get sent to CA Catalyst regardless of whether they were previously exported? CA Configuration Automation maintains a check sum table in its database called acm_catlst_ci_cksum. When a CI is exported, CA Configuration Automation queries the table to see if a check sum for the CI exists. If the CI is 7 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

8 not present in the table, a check sum of the CI s attributes is stored within the table and the CI is sent to Catalyst. If the CI is present in the table but the check sum is different, then the new checksum is entered into the table and the CI is sent to Catalyst for an update. If the CI is present and the checksum is the same, the CI is dropped and not sent to Catalyst as there were no changes to the CI. After exporting my selected CIs from CA Configuration Automation, I see server CIs within SDM that are not listed in the Servers table within CA Configuration Automation and were not part of my Catalyst Job or Management Profile. Where did these CIs come from? These server CIs most likely are a result of selecting to export communication and/or configuration relationships from CA Configuration Automation. The unknown server CIs are typically the source/target servers discovered as part of those relationships. From the CA Configuration Automation UI, click on a server from the Servers table to bring up the server details, select the Relationship tab and then select the Communication or Configuration sub-menu option. View the list of relationships, noting the servers listed in the source and target columns. The unknown servers should be among those in the list. When I view my CIs within CA SDM, I see multiple entries for the same application. Why? When exporting Component CIs (e.g., ProvisionedSoftware CIs) from CA Configuration Automation, the CA Configuration Automation Connector uses the Blueprint Name as the name of the CI. Although the blueprint name is not unique, the CORA attributes, specifically the system name, makes the CI unique. After running a CA Catalyst Job or integration-enabled Management Profile in CA Configuration Automation, I used the CA Catalyst USM Web View to verify the CI counts in the three data repositories: CA Configuration Automation, CA Catalyst (CMDB-View) and ServiceDesk-CMDB. The CI counts between the CA Configuration Automation and CA Catalyst (CMDB-View)/ServiceDesk- CMDB are different. What would cause the counts to differ? When CA Configuration Automation exports the CI/CI relationships, it s possible that multiple instances of the same server or same relationship exist. When the information is processed for export, the duplicate instances are reconciled and only one instance of the CI is sent to Catalyst. Let s take the following example: 8 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

9 This screenshot shows the communication (i.e., Netstat) relationships for the server, ccaserver.forwardinc.ca, discovered using the Softagent technology during Network Discovery. The highlighted portion shows that there are 9 instances where the CA Secure Socket Adapter application on ccaserver.forwardinc.ca is communicating with target servers. From the CCA relationships, a BackgroundProcess CI is created in the Unified Service Model (USM) to represent the process attributes on the relationship. For the CA Secure Socket Adapter application, 9 processes would have been derived based upon what is seen in the screenshot. However, these 9 processes essentially represented the same process when each of the CCA relationships is prepared for export (the target servers are all in fact the same although communication is on different ports). Consequently, only one BackgroundProcess CI (out of the 9) is stored in Catalyst. Also, as part of the CI processing, an IsHostFor relationship is established from the ComputerSystem/VirtualSystem to the BackgroundProcess causing the relationships to be reconciled as well. This is the expected behavior as Catalyst helps to reconcile all duplicate CIs. 9 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

10 Why do the number of relationships in CA CMDB and CA Catalyst s ServiceDesk-CMDB Projection Sheet differ? The Unified Service Model (USM) enforces a constraint that relationships are correlated using source, target, and scope. Scope is an attribute which represents the service object the relationship affects. When CA Catalyst sends relationships to CMDB for creation, the CA SDM Connector creates the CI and traverses the CMDB network of CIs to find its scope. If the scope is not found, the CA SDM Connector publishes the unscoped version of the relationship to CA Catalyst. Later, if the CA SDM connector finds the scope due to some update activity on the relationship, it publishes the scoped relationship to CA Catalyst. The scoped and the unscoped relationships do not correlate which results in extra relationships in the CA Catalyst database. There is no sideeffect of having both scoped and unscoped version of relationships in the CA Catalyst database. However, the relationships tend to persist in CA Catalyst until they are removed from CMDB. When the relationship is removed from CMDB, it deletes the scoped, as well as the unscoped, relationships from CA Catalyst. When I delete servers or components from CA Configuration Automation, are those deletions reflected in CA Catalyst and CA SDM? Yes. The CA Configuration Automation Connector has a timer thread and, at an interval specified by the delete_thread_interval configuration parameter defined in CA Configuration Automation (default: 15 minutes), the thread identifies the CIs marked for deletion in the checksum table and publishes a delete event to CA Catalyst. I have multi-tenancy enabled in either CA Configuration Automation but not in CA Service Desk Manager (or vice versa), will this cause any problem? Yes. Catalyst does reference the tenant of a CI when performing reconciliation. If you have tenancy enabled within CA Configuration Automation, but not within CA Service Desk Manager this may present a problem with reconciliation of information within Catalyst. The recommended procedure is that if you are using multi tenancy you may want to consider enabling it in both products, and to make sure the names of the tenants exist in both. If you are not using tenancy in CA Configuration Automation, but do have it enabled in CA Service Desk Manager you should not run into a problem if the CI is tenanted to Public, the problem would only present if it were assigned to a specific tenant. Possible problems that you may see would include updates to the CIs within CA Configuration Automation not propagating to CA Service Desk Manager, or relationships not being imported into CA Service Desk Manager from CA Configuration Automation. 10 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

11 Troubleshooting How can I verify that the data is being published into CA Catalyst from CA Configuration Automation? There are two places you can check, first the following log on the Catalyst server will have information on data being loaded into Catalyst: C:\Program Files\CA\Catalyst\container\data\log\trace.log Secondly, you can log into the CA Catalyst USM Web View, which will display all Configuration Items that are currently in Catalyst. The URL for the CA Catalyst USM Web View is: The CA Service Desk Manager Connector does not appear to start correctly, how can I troubleshoot this? First you should review the following log on the CA Service Desk Manager Connector server: C:\Program Files\CA\Catalyst\container\data\log\ServiceDeskConnector.log Within the log you can review if the failure is related to its ability to connect to SLUMP (which it will retry, and if it is unable to connect after multiple attempts will shut down). You can also see if the log is providing any authentication errors, which would mean the username and password specified in the connector settings could be inaccurate. If anything needs to be adjusted within the connector s configuration (resetting password for example) you would need to log into the CA Catalyst Registry Server using the following URL: Browse to: /topology/physical/<sdmconnectornodename>/modules/configuration/servicedeskmanagerconnector.xml You can edit the configuration changes through the Registry Server interface and restart the connector. 11 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com

12 How can I configure debug logging for the CA Catalyst Connectors? Connect to the server that you want to adjust the debug logging on (the CA Configuration Automation or SDM server) and browse to: C:\Program Files\CA\Catalyst\container\etc\log4j-ucf.properties For the CA Configuration Automation connector, find: log4j.logger.com.ca.cca.catalyst.connector=info, cca For the SDM connector, find: log4j.logger.com.ca.sdm.connector=info, sdm INFO can be adjusted to DEBUG, TRACE, or ERROR within either connector. 12 Copyright 2012 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective com