Send DPA alert notifications to a third-party notification service through SolarWinds Observability

Some organizations use third-party notification services, such as PagerDuty and ServiceNow, to view alerts from multiple monitoring tools in one place. When you connect DPA to SolarWinds Observability with Platform Connect, you can choose to send DPA alert notifications to notification services that are configured in SolarWinds Observability. Currently, DPA supports sending alert notifications to PagerDuty and ServiceNow.

See the following sections:

• How does Platform Connect secure the information communicated from DPA to SolarWinds Observability?
• Requirements
• Known limitations
• Connect DPA to SolarWinds Observability
• Configure a connection service in SolarWinds Observability
• Create a contact to send notifications to a notification service
• Mapping an alert definition to the contact
• Indication that the notification was forwarded
• Disable Platform Connect

How does Platform Connect secure the information communicated from DPA to SolarWinds Observability?

For data in transit from DPA to SolarWinds Observability, DPA encrypts the data using the TLS 1.2 protocol with a 2048-bit RSA certificate.

Requirements

• DPA users with subscription licenses are eligible to connect to SolarWinds Observability. Users doing a 14-day evaluation and users with temporary licenses (for a fixed term) are also eligible.

• You must have connectivity between your DPA server and your cloud service provider for communication with SolarWinds Observability.

• When DPA is connected to SolarWinds Observability, an agent is installed on the DPA server. During this installation, the swagent user is created. The swagent user requires root privileges.

• If a MySQL server uses SSL and the trustServerCertificate property is set to false, the SSL certificate used for the MySQL server must include the subject alternative name (SAN) field. If it uses only the legacy common name (CN) field, attempts to connect to it using Platform Connect can result in the following error:

  tls: failed to verify certificate: x509: certificate relies on legacy Common Name field, use SANs instead

  To resolve this issue, see Add a subject alternative name to a MySQL server SSL certificate.

Known limitations

• Platform Connect is not supported on a server where both DPA and SQL Sentry are installed.

• If CyberArk vault is being used, configuring DPA to send ServiceNow and PagerDuty notifications using Platform Connect is not supported.

• If you have an evaluation license for DPA, a SolarWinds Observability trial account is created for you when you connect to SolarWinds Observability. You can use this trial account for 30 days. If you change your DPA license from an evaluation license to a temporary or subscription license, you must contact Sales or Support to extend the SolarWinds Observability trial account.

• If you install DPA with Platform Connect on a DPA AWS AMI server, a SolarWinds Observability trial account is created that you can use for 30 days. If you want to extend the SolarWinds Observability trial account, contact Sales or Support.

• If you have used Platform Connect and you want to uninstall DPA, you must first uninstall the SolarWinds Observability Agent.

• If the repo.properties file in the DPA installation directory is updated, you must copy and paste the updated version to the following folder on the DPA server:

  • Linux: /opt/solarwinds/uamsclient/dpa/
  • Windows: C:\ProgramData\SolarWinds\UAMSClient\dpa\

  The repo.properties file might be updated, for example, when you change the location of the Find SQL indexes.

Connect DPA to SolarWinds Observability

1. Log in to DPA as an administrator.

2. From the DPA menu in the upper-right corner, click Options.

3. Under Administration > Configuration, click Platform Connect.

   The Platform Connect wizard opens.

4. On the Welcome screen, click Next.

5. If you accept the license agreement, select the check box and click Next.

6. If you have a SolarWinds Observability account, click the Log in link on the Create Account/Configure Token page to open SolarWinds Observability. Then continue with the next step.

   If you do not have a SolarWinds Observability account, complete the following steps to create a new trial account.

   

   With a trial account, you can evaluate Platform Connect and SolarWinds Observability for 30 days.

   1. Click the Click here link on the Create Account/Configure Token page.

      The Create a SolarWinds Observability account dialog opens.

   2. Enter your information and select a Cloud Provider. Then click Create.

      A message tells you that your account has been created.

      

   3. Check your email. When you receive an email from solarwinds.com, open it.

      The email provides information about SolarWinds Observability.

   4. Click the link in the email to open the SolarWinds Observability login page.

   5. Enter a password for the account, confirm the password, and click Save New Password.

      The SolarWinds Observability Home page opens.

   6. If the dialog prompting you to add entities is open, click Skip to close it.

7. In the SolarWinds Observability left menu, click Settings.

8. In the My Settings menu, click API Tokens.

9. Click Create API Token.

10. Enter a name, verify that Ingestion is selected, and click Create API Token.

    

    A dialog displays the API token.

11. Click the clipboard icon to copy the token to the clipboard. Then click Close.

12. Copy the token to the clipboard. Paste the token into the Token field.

13. Return to the browser tab in which DPA is running. On the Create a SolarWinds Observability account dialog, click Continue to close the dialog.

14. Select a cloud provider, and paste the copied token into the Token field. Then click Next.

    

    The Install Agent page opens.

15. Click Start Installer to begin installing the SolarWinds Observability Agent on your DPA server.

    The agent is the behind-the-scenes service that enables the connection between DPA and SolarWinds Observability.

    DPA displays a message when the installation is complete.

16. Click Finish.

    The connection between DPA and SolarWinds Observability is configured, and the Manage Platform Connect Service page opens.

Configure a connection service in SolarWinds Observability

If you have not done so already, set up a PagerDuty or ServiceNow integration in SolarWinds Observability. For details, see Notification Services settings.

Create a contact to send notifications to a notification service

When you create an alert definition and select this contact to receive notifications, the notifications are sent to the associated notification service.

1. Log in to DPA using an account with administrator privileges.

2. From the DPA menu in the upper-right corner, click Options.

3. Under Administration > Users & Contacts, click Contact Management.

4. On the Contact management page, click Create contact.

   If any contacts are selected, the Create contact button is not displayed.

5. Under Contact type, select SolarWinds Notification Services.

6. Enter a name and, optionally, a description.

7. Under Notification Services Channel Name, select the name associated with the notification service you want to send notifications to.

   

8. To test the configuration, click Send Test Notification and verify that the test was sent to the notification service.

9. (Optional) Add the contact to one or more groups.

   1. Click the down-arrow under Assign contact to groups.

   2. Click a group name to select the group.

      The group is shown in the Assign contacts to groups box.

   3. Repeat these steps to add the contact to more groups.

      

10. Click Create.

    The contact is added to the list of contacts.

Mapping an alert definition to the contact

When you create an alert definition, select the contact you created in the previous section from the Select a recipient drop-down menu. When an alert is triggered at the associated alert level, DPA sends notifications to the notification service.

Indication that the notification was forwarded

To confirm that an alert notification was forwarded to ServiceNow or PagerDuty, view the alert history.

1. From the DPA menu in the upper-right corner, click Alerts.

   The Current alert status page shows information about DPA alerts that are currently active.

2. Click the name of the alert. The Alert details page opens.

3. Scroll down to the History of this alert on this database instance page.

   A PagerDuty or ServiceNow icon is displayed for notifications that were forwarded to a notification service.

   

Disable Platform Connect

If you want DPA to stop sending notifications to SolarWinds Observability, disable the connection between DPA and SolarWinds Observability.

1. Log in to DPA as an administrator.

2. From the DPA menu in the upper-right corner, click Options.

3. Under Administration > Configuration, click Platform Connect.

   The Manage Platform Connect Service page opens.

   

4. Click the green Notification Services button to deselect it.

   The button turns dark gray, and a message informs you that the service is disabled.