How to assign a Vendor Certification to a new, custom Metric Family in Performance Management(NetOps Portal)

Products

• CA Performance Management - Usage and Administration
• DX NetOps

Issue/Introduction

In certain circumstances, a metric may be required to report but doesn't currently exist in the related Vendor Certification for the device. In this case, a new Metric Family is created and imported via REST as per the documentation (TechDocs : DX NetOps - CAPM - Create or Extend Metric Families). However, when it is viewed in NetOps Portal -> DA -> Monitoring Configuration -> Metric Families, there are no Vendor Certifications assigned to it.

For example, a new Metric Family is created for:

Metric family: Client / server SSL statistics
Vendor certification: F5 Client/Server SSL Stats
Metric name: total number of client connections
Metric expression: isdef (sysClientsslStatTotConns5m)? SysClientsslStatTotConns5m: (sysClientsslStatTotNativeConns + sysClientsslStatTotCompatConns)
...

To use the following metrics:

-Target OID: sysClientsslStatTotNativeConns (.1.3.6.1.4.1.3375.2.1.1.2.9.6)
-Target OID: sysClientsslStatTotCompatConns (.1.3.6.1.4.1.3375.2.1.1.2.9.9)
-Calculation formula: [(Value acquired second time <NativeConns> --Value acquired first time <NativeConns>) + (Value acquired second time <CompatConns> --Value acquired first time <CompatConns>)] · interval interval

This gets imported fine, with the new Metric Family appearing (Client/Server SSL Statistics2) but the F5 Client/Server SSL Stats VC is not assigned to it:

Environment

DX NetOps CAPM (3.7 or later)

Resolution

The Vendor Certification (VC) has a reference to what Metric Family (MF) it is linked to:

  <ExpressionGroup destCert="{http://im.ca.com/normalizer}YOUR_CUSTOM_NAME" name=" YOUR_CUSTOM_NAME ">

You get this from the MF:

  <FacetType name="YOUR_CUSTOM_NAME" descriptorClass="com.ca.im.core.datamodel.certs.NormalizedFacetDescriptorImpl">

So, say, for example that the new MF is NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics2, derived from NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics. Then the FacetType declaration in the MF would be:

  <FacetType name="NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics2" descriptorClass="com.ca.im.core.datamodel.certs.NormalizedFacetDescriptorImpl">

For the F5-BIGIP-SYSTEM-MIB, for Client/Server SSL Statistics, the VC is F5 Client/Server SSL Stats, with an internal name of F5BigIPClientServerSSLMib. When you get this VC via a REST client, you see that its ExpressionGroup is:

  <ExpressionGroup destCert="{http://im.ca.com/normalizer}NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics" name="F5BigipSystem.MibDS">

This specifies the assigned MF as NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics which is the original MF that the example above is created from. The ExpressionGroup lists all the metrics linked to the assigned MF and it has an ending tag:

  </ExpressionGroup>

What you need to do is to find the F5 Client/Server SSL Stats VC using the REST client and the following GET request:

  http://<DA_HOST>:8581/typecatalog/certifications/snmp/F5BigIPClientServerSSLMib

 

Then, you need to copy this and edit it to add a new ExpressionGroup following the default one for your new MF (NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics2):

  <ExpressionGroup destCert="{http://im.ca.com/normalizer}NormalizedClientServerSSLStatistics2" name="F5BigipSystem.MibDS">
  ...

  </ExpressionGroup>

Inside this, you need to add expressions to associate the metrics in the new MF to this VC:

  <Expression destAttr="Descriptions">"Client/Server SSL Statistics2"</Expression>

You need to do this for all the new metrics.