Month: May 2024

SNOW REST connectivity

SNOW REST connectivity network icon
SNOW REST connectivity network icon

 

Verify ServiceNow test/production  environment connectivity.  Are you ready to begin the checks for ‘SNOW REST connectivity’?

 

Verify the following pre-requisites are met before proceeding:

Proxy

TEST/PROD ServiceNow (SNow) URL(s)

ID

Password

 

High level outline:

Verify network connectivity via proxy, using SNOW URL’s, ID, password

Verify CredentialManager Snapin installed

Setup credentials in CredentialManager

 

 

Verify network connectivity via proxy, using SNOW URL’s, ID, password

Determine the SCOM notification account being used, see blog for details.

RDP to SCOM MS using notification account.

Open PowerShell as administrator

Verify network connectivity pasting command into PowerShell window

Example SNOW URL JustinTime.servicenowservices.com

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName JustinTime.servicenowservices.com -port 443

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName JustinTime.servicenowservices.com -port 443 -proxy ##PROXY##

 

Successful connectivity

PS C:\MonAdmin\SCRIPTS> Test-NetConnection -ComputerName servicenowservices.com -port 443

ComputerName     : servicenowservices.com

RemoteAddress    : 199.91.136.115

RemotePort       : 443

InterfaceAlias   : Ethernet 2

SourceAddress    : 10.0.0.30

TcpTestSucceeded : True

 

 

Verify CredentialManager Snapin is installed

Best practice – Encrypt credentials on SCOM MS to prevent cleartext in scripts.  To begin, this includes details to verify SnapIn, verify credentials stored, store credentials.

 

Verify CredentialManager Snapin is installed

RDP to SCOM MS server(s) as SCOM Notifications SVC account with SA access

Open PowerShell as administrator

Paste command(s) into PowerShell window to test network connectivity to SNOW environments

# Verify Credential Manager snap in installed

$CredMgrModuleBase = Get-Module -Name CredentialManager

if ( $Null -ne $CredMgrModuleBase.ModuleBase )

{ write-host -f yellow “CredentialManager PoSH Module Installed, ModuleBase = $($CredMgrModuleBase.ModuleBase)” }

if ( $Null -eq $CredMgrModuleBase.ModuleBase )

{ write-host -f red “CredentialManager PoSH Module NOT Installed” }

 

CredentialManager snapin PowerShell output
CredentialManager snapin PowerShell output

 

Verify Stored Credentials on server

First, verify any credentials stored on server, specific to ServiceNow or not.  Second, we begin to use the Get-StoredCredential command. Third, we will setup the credential for REST integration, lastly verifying credential.

Setup Credentials for SNOW RESTAPI

RDP to SCOM MS server(s) as SCOM Notifications SVC account with SA access

Open PowerShell as administrator

Paste command(s) into PowerShell window to test network connectivity to SNOW environments

 

If no output, there are no credentials stored under the RDP login.

Get-StoredCredential

Commands specific to ServiceNow to verify credentials exist

$Credential = Get-StoredCredential -Target “ServiceNowCredential”

$Credential = Get-StoredCredential -Target “svc_rest_scom”

CredentialManager Get-StoredCredential Output
CredentialManager Get-StoredCredential Output

Alternate command to verify stored credential

Get-StoredCredential -Target “ServiceNowCredential”

CredentialManager Get-StoredCredential -Target "ServiceNowCredential"
CredentialManager Get-StoredCredential -Target “ServiceNowCredential”

 

 

Setup Credentials for SNOW RESTAPI

RDP to SCOM MS server(s) as SCOM Notifications SVC account with SA access

Open PowerShell as administrator

Paste the following commands to create stored credential:

New-StoredCredential -Target “ServiceNowCredential” -UserName “svc_rest_scom” -Password “##Password##” -Persist ‘LocalMachine’

 

New-StoredCredential output example
New-StoredCredential output example

 

Verify credential being used by SCOM

$Credential = Get-StoredCredential -Target “ServiceNowCredential”

New-S

 

Therefore, network connectivity verified.  Lastly, encrypted credentials are stored in the SCOM notifications SVC account.  Continue the integration!

SNOW REST integration prerequisites

SNOW REST integration prerequisites
SNOW REST integration prerequisites

Did you know –

These PowerShell scripts allow organizations to specify which alerts/events that need to go to ITSM tool.

Does not matter to the tool, whether Broadcom (Spectrum/DXOI), SolarWinds, MECM/MEM/MCM, SCOM

Pretty much ANY tool that can leverage PowerShell scripts and/or REST calls can utilize this script.

The following ServiceNow ‘SNOW REST integration prerequisites’ are required before proceeding.

TEST/PROD ServiceNow (SNow) URL(s)

ID

Password

Incident short_description naming convention

ServiceNow SNOW Alert rule (to make events create incidents)

ServiceNow SNOW Incidents require additional variables to match ServiceNow selections

 

SNOW Incident short_description field is the title of the incident

Pre-define this in the SNOW REST Event/incident injection, to meet organizational naming conventions

Description can be additional details about the issue to be investigated, resolved.

SNOW Incident short_description, description fields
SNOW Incident short_description, description fields

 

Examples of short_description titles

# Setup SNOW Event Name standard

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “<Org> <Team> SCOM Test Event – $Alert”

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “<Team> <ORG> SCOM Event – $AlertName”

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “<Team> <ORG> SCOM $AlertName”

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “##CUSTOMER## ##TEAM## SCOM Event – $AlertName”

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “##TEAM## ##CUSTOMER##: SCOM – $AlertName”

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “##TEAM## ##CUSTOMER##: SPECTRUM – $AlertName”

Example SNOWAlertName

$SNOWAlertName = “##TEAM## ##CUSTOMER##: SOLARWINDS – $AlertName”

 

SNOW Incident fields

Direct Incident REST injection requires additional fields, such as caller, business_service, category, subcategory, channel, impact, urgency, priority, assignment_group
SNOW Incident fields
SNOW Incident fields
Additional SNOW incident fields
Additional SNOW incident fields

 

Additional information

REST/RESTAPI https://www.techtarget.com/searchapparchitecture/definition/RESTful-API

SNOW Utah Connector https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/utah-it-operations-management/page/product/event-management/task/t_EMConfigureSCOMConnector.html

Additional blogs showing scope and options using ServiceNow for ITSM tool

https://kevinjustin.com/blog/2024/03/27/servicenow-event-integration/

https://kevinjustin.com/blog/2024/03/27/servicenow-incident-integration/

https://kevinjustin.com/blog/2024/04/30/servicenow-connector-for-scom/

https://kevinjustin.com/blog/2024/05/24/lots-of-options-to-create-servicenow-incidents-through-powershell-scripts-connectors-and-3rd-party-vendors/

Create ServiceNow incidents from SCOM

Create ServiceNow incidents from SCOM
Create ServiceNow incidents from SCOM

Been working to ‘Create ServiceNow incidents from SCOM’ with Joe Kelly (Joe’s LinkedIn), Steven Brown (Steven’s LinkedIn), and Tim Fields (Tim’s LinkedIn).  Over the past few months, we’ve found quite a few methods available, some free, some with cost.  All methods are built on ServiceNow (SNow) REST commands.  The resulting PowerShell scripts can do most of the heavy lifting for other Tools like SolarWinds, vCenter, vRealize,  Zabbix, SAP manager, Kafka, Nagios, HP OpenView.

 

Last month’s blog showcased the ServiceNow API/Connector for SCOM

ServiceNow Connector for SCOM

 

Depending on your customer use cases, this may not be the preferred choice.

One SNOW flavor is like NetCool, where you inject ALL SCOM alerts into ITSM tool (i.e. SNOW events).  Another flavor allows you to create a group of objects which will inject SNOW events.

What if you only want incidents for a small subset, and don’t want to wait on SNOW team?

We got that covered.

What if SNOW team wants events only, how can you create an incident?

We got that covered.

 

ServiceNow connector options:

Inject SNOW incident from SCOM (direct) https://github.com/theKevinJustin/New-SNOWIncidents

Inject SNOW event (requires SNOW alert rules to process alert to incident) https://github.com/theKevinJustin/New-SNowEvent

SNOW SCOM connector

    1. Send all SCOM alerts to SNOW as events
    2. Send specific SCOM group of objects to SNOW as events

3rd party options

      1. OpsLogix SCOM ServiceNow connector (costs) https://www.opslogix.com/servicenow-incident-connector
      2. Cookdown SNOW incident connector https://www.cookdown.com/blog/how-to-build-a-servicenow-incident-connector-for-scom download MP https://www.cookdown.com/servicenow-monitoring-mp#download
      3. Tim McFadden SCOM ServiceNow connector https://www.scom2k7.com/introducing-the-scom-to-servicenow-connector/ (unsure if Tim still supports this)

 

Stay tuned…

Next steps are to build out the SCOM command execution channel using Holman’s blog https://kevinholman.com/2021/08/25/what-account-will-command-channel-notifications-run-as-in-scom/