OpenStack and ServiceNow Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin collects metrics from essential OpenStack services, facilitating the monitoring and management of cloud infrastructures.

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

OpenStack

The OpenStack plugin allows users to collect performance metrics from various OpenStack services such as CINDER, GLANCE, HEAT, KEYSTONE, NEUTRON, and NOVA. It supports multiple OpenStack APIs to fetch critical metrics related to these services, enabling comprehensive monitoring and management of cloud resources. As organizations increasingly adopt OpenStack for their cloud infrastructure, this plugin plays a vital role in providing insights into resource usage, availability, and performance across the cloud environment. Configuration options allow for customized polling intervals and filtering unwanted tags to optimize performance and cardinals.

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

OpenStack

[[inputs.openstack]]
  ## The recommended interval to poll is '30m'

  ## The identity endpoint to authenticate against and get the service catalog from.
  authentication_endpoint = "https://my.openstack.cloud:5000"

  ## The domain to authenticate against when using a V3 identity endpoint.
  # domain = "default"

  ## The project to authenticate as.
  # project = "admin"

  ## User authentication credentials. Must have admin rights.
  username = "admin"
  password = "password"

  ## Available services are:
  ## "agents", "aggregates", "cinder_services", "flavors", "hypervisors",
  ## "networks", "nova_services", "ports", "projects", "servers",
  ## "serverdiagnostics", "services", "stacks", "storage_pools", "subnets",
  ## "volumes"
  # enabled_services = ["services", "projects", "hypervisors", "flavors", "networks", "volumes"]

  ## Query all instances of all tenants for the volumes and server services
  ## NOTE: Usually this is only permitted for administrators!
  # query_all_tenants = true

  ## output secrets (such as adminPass(for server) and UserID(for volume)).
  # output_secrets = false

  ## Amount of time allowed to complete the HTTP(s) request.
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## HTTP Proxy support
  # http_proxy_url = ""

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = /path/to/cafile
  # tls_cert = /path/to/certfile
  # tls_key = /path/to/keyfile
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Options for tags received from Openstack
  # tag_prefix = "openstack_tag_"
  # tag_value = "true"

  ## Timestamp format for timestamp data received from Openstack.
  ## If false format is unix nanoseconds.
  # human_readable_timestamps = false

  ## Measure Openstack call duration
  # measure_openstack_requests = false

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

OpenStack

1. Cross-Cloud Management: Leverage the OpenStack plugin to monitor and manage multiple OpenStack clouds from a single Telegraf instance. By aggregating metrics across different clouds, organizations can gain insights into resource utilization and optimize their cloud architecture for cost and performance.

2. Automated Scaling Based on Metrics: Integrate the metrics gathered from OpenStack into an automated scaling solution. For example, if the plugin detects that a specific service’s performance is degraded, it can trigger auto-scaling rules to launch additional instances, ensuring that system performance remains optimal under varying workloads.

3. Performance Monitoring Dashboard: Use data collected by the OpenStack Telegraf plugin to power real-time monitoring dashboards. This setup provides visualizations of key metrics from OpenStack services, enabling stakeholders to quickly identify trends, pinpoint issues, and make data-driven decisions in managing their cloud infrastructure.

4. Reporting and Analysis of Service Availability: By utilizing the metrics collected from various OpenStack services, teams can generate detailed reports on service availability and performance over time. This information can help identify recurring issues, improve service delivery, and make informed decisions regarding changes in infrastructure or service configuration.

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.

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