Azure Monitor and ServiceNow Integration

Input and output integration overview

Gather metrics from Azure resources using the Azure Monitor API.

This output plugin streams metrics from Telegraf directly to a ServiceNow MID Server via HTTP, leveraging the nowmetric serializer for efficient integration with ServiceNow’s Operational Intelligence and Event Management.

Integration details

Azure Monitor

The Azure Monitor Telegraf plugin is specifically designed for gathering metrics from various Azure resources using the Azure Monitor API. Users must provide specific credentials such as client_id, client_secret, tenant_id, and subscription_id to authenticate and gain access to their Azure resources. Additionally, the plugin supports functionality to collect metrics from both individual resources and resource groups or subscriptions, allowing for flexible and scalable metric collection tailored to user needs. This plugin is ideal for organizations leveraging Azure cloud infrastructure, providing crucial insights into resource performance and utilization over time, facilitating proactive management and optimization of cloud resources.

ServiceNow

Telegraf can be used to send metric data directly to a ServiceNow MID Server REST endpoint. Metrics are formatted either using ServiceNow’s Operational Intelligence (OI) format or JSONv2 format, enabling seamless integration with ServiceNow’s Event Management and Operational Intelligence platforms. The serializer batches metrics efficiently, reducing network overhead by minimizing the number of HTTP POST requests. This integration allows users to quickly leverage metrics in ServiceNow for enhanced observability, proactive incident management, and performance monitoring, with ServiceNow’s operational intelligence capabilities.

Configuration

Azure Monitor

# Gather Azure resources metrics from Azure Monitor API
[[inputs.azure_monitor]]
  # can be found under Overview->Essentials in the Azure portal for your application/service
  subscription_id = "<>"
  # can be obtained by registering an application under Azure Active Directory
  client_id = "<>"
  # can be obtained by registering an application under Azure Active Directory.
  # If not specified Default Azure Credentials chain will be attempted:
  # - Environment credentials (AZURE_*)
  # - Workload Identity in Kubernetes cluster
  # - Managed Identity
  # - Azure CLI auth
  # - Developer Azure CLI auth
  client_secret = "<>"
  # can be found under Azure Active Directory->Properties
  tenant_id = "<>"
  # Define the optional Azure cloud option e.g. AzureChina, AzureGovernment or AzurePublic. The default is AzurePublic.
  # cloud_option = "AzurePublic"

  # resource target #1 to collect metrics from
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_target]]
    # can be found under Overview->Essentials->JSON View in the Azure portal for your application/service
    # must start with 'resourceGroups/...' ('/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx'
    # must be removed from the beginning of Resource ID property value)
    resource_id = "<>"
    # the metric names to collect
    # leave the array empty to use all metrics available to this resource
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    # metrics aggregation type value to collect
    # can be 'Total', 'Count', 'Average', 'Minimum', 'Maximum'
    # leave the array empty to collect all aggregation types values for each metric
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # resource target #2 to collect metrics from
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_target]]
    resource_id = "<>"
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # resource group target #1 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target]]
    # the resource group name
    resource_group = "<>"

    # defines the resources to collect metrics from
    [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target.resource]]
      # the resource type
      resource_type = "<>"
      metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
      aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

    # defines the resources to collect metrics from
    [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target.resource]]
      resource_type = "<>"
      metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
      aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # resource group target #2 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target]]
    resource_group = "<>"

    [[inputs.azure_monitor.resource_group_target.resource]]
      resource_type = "<>"
      metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
      aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # subscription target #1 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.subscription_target]]
    resource_type = "<>"
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]

  # subscription target #2 to collect metrics from resources under it with resource type
  [[inputs.azure_monitor.subscription_target]]
    resource_type = "<>"
    metrics = [ "<>", "<>" ]
    aggregations = [ "<>", "<>" ]
</code></pre>

ServiceNow

[[outputs.http]]
  ## ServiceNow MID Server metrics endpoint
  url = "http://mid-server.example.com:9082/api/mid/sa/metrics"

  ## HTTP request method
  method = "POST"

  ## Basic Authentication credentials
  username = "evt.integration"
  password = "P@$$w0rd!"

  ## Data serialization format for ServiceNow
  data_format = "nowmetric"

  ## Metric format type: "oi" (default) or "jsonv2"
  nowmetric_format = "oi"

  ## HTTP Headers
  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/json"
    Accept = "application/json"

  ## Optional timeout
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## TLS configuration options
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

Input and output integration examples

Azure Monitor

1. Dynamic Resource Monitoring: Use the Azure Monitor plugin to dynamically gather metrics from Azure resources based on specific criteria like tags or resource types. Organizations can automate the process of loading and unloading resource metrics, enabling better performance tracking and optimization based on resource utilization patterns.

2. Multi-Cloud Monitoring Integration: Integrate metrics collected from Azure Monitor with other cloud providers using a centralized monitoring solution. This allows organizations to view and analyze performance data across multiple cloud deployments, providing a holistic overview of resource performance and costs, and streamlining operations.

3. Anomaly Detection and Alerting: Leverage the metrics gathered via the Azure Monitor plugin in conjunction with machine learning algorithms to detect anomalies in resource utilization. By establishing baseline performance metrics and automatically alerting on deviations, organizations can mitigate risks and address performance issues before they escalate.

4. Historical Performance Analysis: Use the collected Azure metrics to conduct historical analysis by feeding the data into a data warehousing solution. This enables organizations to track trends over time, allowing for detailed reporting and decision-making based on historical performance data.

ServiceNow

1. Proactive Incident Management: Utilize the Telegraf and ServiceNow integration to stream infrastructure and application metrics in real-time to ServiceNow Event Management. Automatically trigger incidents or remediation workflows based on thresholds, significantly reducing incident detection and response times.

2. End-to-End Application Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across multiple layers of an application stack, sending performance metrics directly into ServiceNow. Leveraging ServiceNow’s Operational Intelligence, teams can correlate metrics across components, quickly identifying performance bottlenecks.

3. Dynamic CI Performance Tracking: Integrate Telegraf metrics with ServiceNow’s CMDB by using this plugin to push performance data, allowing automatic updates of Configuration Item (CI) health states based on live metrics. This ensures an accurate and current state of infrastructure health in ServiceNow.

4. Cloud Resource Optimization: Collect metrics from hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures using Telegraf, streaming directly to ServiceNow. Leverage these metrics for real-time analytics, predictive capacity planning, and resource optimization, enabling proactive management and reduced operational costs.

Feedback

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