Is it Possible?

Setting custom property values on nodes in Orion is simple with SWIS. I'll let the community chime in with any similar experiences.

Doing this very soon and I've done similar in the past. What's your cmdb and is it your source of just application name pick list values or also the mapping of each node to applications?

What we did to prep for this was add a ServiceNow flat field which shows the upstream relationships (including applications) in a simple comma delimitated list. Pop that field value over to Solarwinds node custom property and build group dynamic queries for node custom property contains value (app name).

The contains allows you to match a single field to multiple dynamic queries.

Then share the group template pages with your app teams. Extra credit for building integration where cmdb app names create groups and their dynamic queries.

Thanks,

Christian

Thank you for the info and the suggestions.

To answer your question, I'm not sure on the backend of the actual CMDB we have.  It's in CA Service Desk.  We also have a SQL feed that I know has the mapping of node to application.

We do this off our in-house CMDB -- basically I pull the current values from the CMDB, and the nodes, Diff the two, and apply any updates.

1. it's time-intensive to pull the values one at a time from Orion and compare them one-by one. it's much faster to pull all the values from both sources, and process it as a batch. This takes a bit more programming skill.

2. you get a LOT of audit records as a result of these updates.

Why not see if you can have your DBA's, assuming you have access to some or can figure it out yourself, pull in a view of the cmdb data through SQL. Then rather then API you can just update SQL values. Pick your poison.

Or pull both into SQL and compare then push back into Orion via API.

Thanks,

Christian

We do the same.

We use JIRA for our inventory currently and had a need to pull about 15-20 fields per item over into Orion for alert management, node grouping, etc.

Used powershell to query Orion and JIRA via their API's - Once the data was exported and available to the script it is manipulated/reformated, compared to current values, and then updated if needed.

While we used API's but you can just as easily query SQL or another DB (Probably can even get your DBA to generate the needed SQL query and paste it into powershell) and achieve the same results - you just need to get a "dump" of the data you need into powershell.

Anything is possible if you believe in yourself. YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!

When doing the synchronisation a couple of other things to think about:

1. Do you do a complete bulk update and update all rows or do you perform data validation and only update new/changed records

2. Is there a trigger point you can use, for example, is there a datetime field in the CMDB which can be used as the trigger/filter for creating/updating records

3. Is there data within Orion you wish to sync back to the CMDB, especially if you have NCM, there is a lot of very useful information being kept up to date by Orion

The script examples on Thwack and provided with the SDK and on Github are a great starting point on seeing how the API can be leveraged for this function.

Mark Roberts

Prosperon - UK SolarWinds Partners

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