Optimising PowerFlow Integrations: Isolating Incident and CMDB Workloads
In complex IT environments, integrations like incident management and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) synchronisation are pivotal. ScienceLogic's PowerFlow platform offers robust capabilities to handle these integrations. However, to ensure optimal performance and prevent resource contention, it's crucial to configure dedicated steprunners and queues for different workloads. This article discusses on-premises instances of PowerFlow. If you are using a SaaS-hosted instance of PowerFlow, please submit a service request via the Support Portal outlining your requirements. The relevant team will then review your request and discuss the necessary changes to be made on your SaaS instance of PowerFlow. Understanding the Challenge Incident management and CMDB synchronisation have distinct characteristics: Incident Management: Typically involves lightweight, high-frequency tasks that require rapid processing to maintain real-time responsiveness. CMDB Synchronisation: Often deals with bulk data operations, such as syncing large volumes of configuration items, which are resource-intensive and time-consuming. Running both integrations on the same steprunner can lead to performance issues. For instance, a heavy CMDB sync might consume significant resources, delaying the processing of critical incident tasks. Implementing Dedicated Steprunners and Queues To address this, PowerFlow allows the configuration of steprunners to listen to specific queues. By assigning separate queues for incident and CMDB tasks, you can isolate their processing and allocate resources appropriately. Example Configuration Here's how you might define dedicated steprunners in your docker-compose.override.yml: Incident Steprunner: steprunner-incident: image: sciencelogic/is-worker:latest hostname: "incident-{{.Task.ID}}" deploy: resources: limits: memory: 2G replicas: 10 environment: user_queues: 'incident_queue' worker_threads: 4 CMDB Steprunner: steprunner-cmdb: image: sciencelogic/is-worker:latest hostname: "cmdb-{{.Task.ID}}" deploy: resources: limits: memory: 4G replicas: 5 environment: user_queues: 'cmdb_queue' worker_threads: 2 In this setup: user_queues: Assigns each steprunner to a specific queue (incident_queue or cmdb_queue), ensuring isolation of workloads. worker_threads: Defines how many concurrent tasks each steprunner container can process. Higher for incidents because incident syncs are typically lightweight and frequent. Lower for CMDB to reduce memory contention since CMDB data is often bulkier and more complex. deploy.resources.limits.memory: Caps how much memory each steprunner container can use. This helps prevent individual steprunners from consuming excessive memory, which is especially important when running many containers on shared infrastructure. Example: 2G for incidents (moderate), 4G for CMDB (higher due to heavier payloads). deploy.replicas: Specifies how many containers to run for each steprunner service. More replicas for incidents to handle high throughput. Fewer for CMDB, since each task may take longer and use more resources. Benefits of Isolation Performance Optimisation: Ensures that resource-heavy CMDB tasks don't impede the processing of time-sensitive incident tasks. Scalability: Allows independent scaling of steprunners based on the workload demands of each integration. Resource Management: Facilitates fine-tuned allocation of system resources, reducing the risk of bottlenecks and failures. Monitoring and Adjustments Regular monitoring is essential to maintain optimal performance: Queue Lengths: Persistent growth in queue lengths may indicate the need for additional steprunners or increased thread counts. Resource Utilisation: Monitor CPU and memory usage to prevent over utilisation. Error Rates: High error rates might necessitate adjustments in configurations or error-handling mechanisms. Final Thoughts By strategically configuring dedicated steprunners and queues for incident and CMDB integrations, you can enhance the efficiency, reliability, and scalability of your PowerFlow environment. This approach ensures that each integration operates within its optimal parameters, delivering better performance and resource utilisation.2024 Customer Success Honoree Award Winners
Any community whether online or in person is a place to share and learn. As leader of Customer Advocacy, my role too encompasses sharing the voice of our customer in many formats in order for our peers to thrive from this knowledge. In case you missed it, we recently launched our ScienceLogic 2024 Customer Success Honorees - an awards program recognizing those who have made significant progress in a specific area, and have been an integral champion for SL1 success. I wanted to share with you these wonderful advocates, our finalists, in the hopes it inspires you to share your stories of success with our new Nexus community! Stay tuned for our upcoming 2024 Innovators Awards, an application-based awards program celebrating and recognizing customers and partners who are leading the charge in digital transformation, operational excellence, innovation, and business impact utilizing SL1 in innovative ways. Applications are opening early June! Read more in our CS Honoree eBook. Congratulations to each of our 2024 Honorees! đź‘Źđź’Ł If you're interested in telling your SL1 story, please reach out to me, and join our Pathfinders customer advocate program.Connect with a PowerFlow Product Manager
We Want Your Insights! We would love to connect with you one-on-one to gather your feedback and insights about PowerFlow. Your experiences are key to shaping the future of our product! Why Chat? Share your thoughts on how we can improve Discuss any challenges you’ve faced Help us prioritize features that matter to you Please note that these calls are not intended to address issues that can be resolved through Support Cases. Ready to make an impact? Book a call with us now! Thanks for being part of our journey!
Device configuration "key/value" pairs synchronization to ITSM
With Powerflow most data are pretty easy to sync from SL1 to ITSM/CMDB, in this case ServiceNow. But now we have requirement that we should sync cloud device tags from SL1 to SN. The data from Azure virtual server, using Azure PP, is shown on SL1 like below, multiple key/value rows per device. So those are not easily stored into Attributes. And if I have understood correctly, quite a lot of tags used in cloud. Any ideas how these could be synced with PF into ServiceNow?PowerFlow v3.1.1 & PFCTL 2.7.11 Release
Hello, We are pleased to announce the release of PowerFlow v3.1.1 and PFCTL v2.7.11, which contain important fixes to the PowerFlow 3.1.0 and PFCTL v2.7.10 releases. Please read the Release Notes carefully before installing these releases. These are the highlights only. FEATURES This section covers the features that are included in SL1 PowerFlow Platform version 3.1.1: The following images are included in this release of PowerFlow: registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-api:rhel3.1.1 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-couchbase:6.6.0-13 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-dex:2.37.1-10 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-worker:rhel3.1.1 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-gui:3.1.1 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-pypi:6.3.1-14 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-rabbit:3.8.35-6 registry.scilo.tools/sciencelogic/pf-redis:6.2.14-5 ISSUES ADDRESSED The following issues were addressed in this release: Addressed an issue that prevented new schedules from functioning correctly if an application used an ID with both upper and lowercase letters. (Case: 00495740) Jinja2 is now available in the PowerFlow Devpi Server, which allows the ServiceNow CMDB SyncPack to use it while rendering templates. (Case: 00492419) Thank you, Release ManagementScienceLogic - ServiceNow Integrations: ITOM Licensing Requirements
ScienceLogic maximizes customers' investments in ServiceNow through its powerful suite of pre-built integrations, referred to as SyncPacks. ScienceLogic offers certified ServiceNow scoped applications for streamlined platform integration, accessible via the ServiceNow Store, ensuring seamless compatibility. Understanding the licensing requirements for ServiceNow integrations is crucial for informed decision-making. This document seeks to clarify the IT Operations Management (ITOM) licensing requirements for ScienceLogic integrations with ServiceNow. Its purpose is to eliminate any confusion regarding which integrations necessitate ITOM licensing. Note: ServiceNow’s ITOM licensing is further organized into different tiers. This document is not intended to help identify the suitable tier for your requirements. For any questions related to this, please contact ServiceNow. Scoped Application ServiceNow Module ITOM License requirement ScienceLogic SL1: Customer Service Management Integration Customer Service Management - Cases No ScienceLogic SL1: Incident Automation IT Service Management - Incident No ScienceLogic ServiceNow Integration IT Service Management - CMDB * Situational ScienceLogic SL1: Service Catalog Automation IT Service Management - Service Catalog ** Situational Service Graph Connector for ScienceLogic IT Operations Management - CMDB Yes ScienceLogic Event Integration IT Operations Management - Events Yes * ScienceLogic is actively adding support for cloud infrastructure mappings within our integrations. To effectively leverage these features in accordance with ServiceNow best practices, you might require ITOM licensing. Customers can contact their ScienceLogic representatives for cloud mapping questions. ** ITOM licenses are necessary only if you are implementing a CMDB using ITOM FAQs Here are some frequently asked questions (FAQs) from our customers Q: Are there other scenarios where one would need IT Operations Management (ITOM) licenses for CMDB? A: The necessity for ITOM licenses is primarily influenced by the specific goals of your organization. Customers of ScienceLogic are not required to adopt ITOM unless their integration module is inherently ITOM-based. We observe that customers generally opt for ITOM in the following situations: To deploy out-of-the-box ServiceNow automation for ensuring data quality and reliability. When transitioning to a more advanced, ServiceNow-defined CSDM (Common Service Data Model) framework. Q: Do Business Services in ScienceLogic need IT Operations Management (ITOM) licenses to be integrated into ServiceNow? A: No, it does not. ScienceLogic integrations leverage out-of-the-box ServiceNow CMDB tables, eliminating the need for ITOM licenses. You can effectively replicate ScienceLogic Business Service Models in ServiceNow by leveraging our integrations. Customer Testimonials Discover what our customers are saying about our integrations. “ We like that ScienceLogic has a tight integration with ServiceNow and particularly the fact that we don't need to deploy the additional discovery modules from an integration perspective. ” “ We are able to have a single pane of glass using ServiceNow. All monitoring events and CMDB population is managed by ServiceNow. ScienceLogic is a great monitoring system that integrates well with ServiceNow using its integration server, which provides workflow and rules that work with our systems. ”Restorepoint Automation PowerPack v104 is Released
Hello, We are pleased to announce that Restorepoint Automation PowerPack version 104 has been released. This PowerPack contains supporting changes to enhance compatibility with Restorepoint SyncPack version 2.3.0. Restorepoint Automation PowerPack version 104 is supported for SL1 v12.1 or higher, and for PowerFlow version 2.6.0 and higher, and works with the Datacenter Advanced Enrichment Actions PowerPack. Thank you, Release ManagementServiceNow Base SyncPack v3.8.1
Hello, We are pleased to announce the release of ServiceNow Base SyncPack version 3.8.1, which is designed to support ServiceNow CMDB SyncPack version 3.6.1, also released today. Features Included in This Release Added updates to support "ServiceNow CMDB" SyncPack version 3.6.1. Thank you, Release Management
PowerFlow output to Syslog repository
We're looking at enabling Syslog output to a central repository from PowerFlow at an application level. We've already got this running fine at an OS level and SL1 at an application level. Has anybody setup logging for PowerFlow? We're specifically interested in any login type data and also code changes. I've been through as much doc as I can find on the topic, such as: https://docs.sciencelogic.com/pdf/sciencelogic_powerflow_2-1-1.pdf https://docs.docker.com/engine/logging/drivers/syslog/ https://support.sciencelogic.com/s/article/10819 It doesn't appear straight forward to link log files in /var/log/iservices to their respective Docker services. I'm just looking for validation as much as anything, that Docker level logging of the contentapi and gui processes would be the way forward to capture all relevant security related information, and that all other processes can be ignored.ServiceNow SyncPack Certification Update - Xanadu
Hello all – We are pleased to announce that ScienceLogic's latest integrations with ServiceNow are certified with ServiceNow Xanadu! This is an important milestone, taking place immediately after ServiceNow Xanadu was released. This is exciting news, because Each new ServiceNow release includes valuable features and enhancements that can significantly improve efficiency and functionality. Staying certified ensures our partners can leverage these innovations for their clients. As ServiceNow partners, being certified for the latest release is also crucial, because ServiceNow only maintains the last two releases (n-2). Older releases (more than two versions back) may no longer receive support or updates, making it challenging to troubleshoot issues or implement new features for clients still using outdated versions. As our customers update to the latest with ServiceNow's new releases, we ensure our scoped apps are certified every release to not only be in lock-step but also to leverage new capabilities. With Xanadu, ServiceNow has delivered their “Biggest AI Release Yet!” To learn more, see https://www.servicenow.com/community/releases-and-upgrades/ct-p/releases-and-upgrades. Thank you, Release Management
