Integrate with VMware vCenter Server Appliance

This article highlights a new alerting feature that's natively available in Jira Service Management which is gradually rolling out to some Jira Service Management Cloud customers. It may not yet be visible or available on your site.

What does the integration offer?

Use Jira Service Management's VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (VCSA) Integration to forward VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance incidents to Jira Service Management. Jira Service Management acts as a dispatcher for these incidents and determines the right people to notify based on on-call schedules– notifies via email, text messages (SMS), phone calls, and iPhone & Android push notifications, and escalates alerts until the alert is acknowledged or closed.

How does the integration work?

When an alarm is created in VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance, it creates an alert in Jira Service Management.

Set up the integration

VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance is an API-based integration. Setting it up involves the following steps:

Add a VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance integration in Jira Service Management
Configure the integration in VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance

Add a VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance integration

If you're using the Free or Standard plan in Jira Service Management, you can only add this integration from your team’s operations page. To access the feature through Settings (gear icon) > Products (under JIRA SETTINGS) > OPERATIONS, you need to be on Premium or Enterprise plan.

Adding an integration from your team’s operations page makes your team the owner of the integration. This means Jira Service Management only assigns the alerts received through this integration to your team.

To add a VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance integration in Jira Service Management, complete the following steps:

Go to your team’s operations page.
On the left navigation panel, select Integrations and then Add integration.
Run a search and select “VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance”.
On the next screen, enter a name for the integration.
Optional: Select a team in Assignee team if you want a specific team to receive alerts from the integration.
Select Continue.
The integration is saved at this point.
Expand the Steps to configure the integration section and copy the API key.
You will use this key while configuring the integration in VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance later.
Select Turn on integration.
The rules you create for the integration will work only if you turn on the integration.

Configure the integration in VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance

To configure the integration of VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance with Jira Service Management, complete the following steps:

Download the VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance integration package for Jira Service Management.
Run the following command: sudo rpm -i jsm-vcenter-your_version.rpm.
The configuration file for the plugin (jsm-integration.conf) is found at /etc/jsm/conf.
Open jsm-integration.conf for editing.
Copy the API key for VCSA integration copied previously into apiKey.
Save the configuration file.
Run the vSphere client.
In vSphere vClient, select Actions.
Select Alarms > New Alarm.
While configuring the alarm, add an action named "Run Command" and enter C:\jsm-integration\scripts\send2jsm.exe into Configuration.
Save the alarm.

Configure the plugin in VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance

The plugin uses a golang-executable file (included in the plugin as vcsa2jsm) to create alerts in Jira Service Management. VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance should be configured to execute this file on events to create alerts in Jira Service Management.

Setting the apiKey is required. Other configuration parameters are set to defaults that work with most VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance implementations but may need to be modified as well.

Configuration parameters

apiKey - Copy the API key from the VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance integration you've created above. vcsa2jsm uses this key to authenticate to Jira Service Management. API key is also used to identify the right integration configuration that should be used to process alerts.

teams - Teams field is used to specify which teams to notify of VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance alerts. This field is used to set the default teams field value. It can be modified to route different alerts to different teams in Jira Service Management VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance integration, Advanced Settings page.

tags - Tags field is used to specify the tags of the alert that created in Jira Service Management.

logPath - Specifies the full path of the log file. (Default value is /var/log/vcsa2jsm.log)

vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.enabled - vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.enabled field is to enable/disable external proxy configuration. The default value is false.

vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.host - It is the host of the proxy.

vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.port - It is the port of the proxy.

vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.scheme - It is the proxy connection protocol. It may be http or https depending on your proxy servers. Its default value is http.

vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.username - It is the Proxy authentication username.

vcsa2jsm.http.proxy.password - It is the Proxy authentication password.

jsm.api.url - If using Jira Service Management from another domain(eg. EU, sandbox), update this configuration.

There are three ways to configure golang-executable file:

Configure from the conf file

Configure from /etc/jsm/conf/jsm-integration.conf file. Configuring from conf file overwrites the configurations made in the script.

Configure by using golang flags

Configure by entering flags to command of the notification you created in VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance, which is described in "Configure Triggers in vCenter Server Virtual Appliance" section. Use -apiKey flag for the apiKey.

To send additional custom arguments, add them after the flags as: customArgName1 customArgValue1 customArgName2 customArgValue2. Parse custom arguments by adding {{_payload.customArgName}} to wherever is needed on the input fields.
Read more about dynamic properties.

Configure from the script

Configure apiKey vcsa2jsm.go script. To use this option, build the script again and put the new executable to /etc/jsm/ directory. The go script is located in /etc/jsm/ directory.

Sample payload sent from VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance

Create Alert Payload (in JSON format)

{
    "VMWARE_ALARM_ALARMVALUE": "Event details",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_DECLARINGSUMMARY": "([Event alarm expression: Alarm created; Status ",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_EVENTDESCRIPTION": "Reconfigured testAlarm 'testAlarm' on Datacenter.  \n \nModified:  \n \ninfo.expression.expression: ((comparisons ",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_EVENT_DATACENTER": "Datacenter",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_EVENT_USERNAME": "VSPHERE.LOCAL\\Administrator",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_ID": "alarm-310",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_NAME": "jsmAlarm",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_NEWSTATUS": "Green",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_OLDSTATUS": "Yellow",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_TARGET_ID": "datacenter-21",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_TARGET_NAME": "Datacenter",
    "VMWARE_ALARM_TRIGGERINGSUMMARY": "Event: Alarm reconfigured (1978)\nSummary: Reconfigured alarm 'testAlarm' on Datacenter.  \n \nModified:  \n \ninfo.expression.expression: ((comparisons "

}

Jira Service Management parses the payload as follows:

(in JSON format)

{
    "alarmValue": "Event details",
    "declaringSummary": "([Event alarm expression: Alarm created; Status ",
    "eventDescription": "Reconfigured testAlarm 'testAlarm' on Datacenter.  \n \nModified:  \n \ninfo.expression.expression: ((comparisons ",
    "eventDatacemter": "Datacenter",
    "eventUsername": "VSPHERE.LOCAL\\Administrator",
    "alarmID": "alarm-310",
    "alarmName": "jsmAlarm",
    "newStatus": "Green",
    "oldStatus": "Yellow",
    "targetID": "datacenter-21",
    "targetName": "Datacenter",
    "triggeringSummary": "Event: Alarm reconfigured (1978)\nSummary: Reconfigured alarm 'testAlarmæ' on Datacenter.  \n \nModified:  \n \ninfo.expression.expression: ((comparisons "

}

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