Netflow and ServiceNow Integration

Input and output integration overview

The Netflow plugin is designed to collect traffic flow data from devices using the Netflow v5, v9 and IPFIX protocols. By capturing detailed flow information, this plugin supports network observability and analysis, enabling administrators to monitor traffic patterns and performance metrics effectively.

This output plugin streams metrics from Telegraf directly to a ServiceNow MID Server via HTTP, leveraging the nowmetric serializer for efficient integration with ServiceNow’s Operational Intelligence and Event Management.

Integration details

Netflow

The Netflow plugin serves as a collector for flow data using protocols such as Netflow v5, Netflow v9, and IPFIX. This plugin allows users to gather important flow metrics from devices that support these protocols, including a variety of operational insights about traffic patterns, source/destination information, and protocol usage. The plugin leverages templates sent by flow devices to decode incoming data correctly, and it supports private enterprise number mappings for vendor-specific information. With features like adjustable service addresses and buffer sizes, the plugin provides flexibility in how it can be deployed within various network architectures, making it an essential tool for network monitoring and analysis.

ServiceNow

Telegraf can be used to send metric data directly to a ServiceNow MID Server REST endpoint. Metrics are formatted either using ServiceNow’s Operational Intelligence (OI) format or JSONv2 format, enabling seamless integration with ServiceNow’s Event Management and Operational Intelligence platforms. The serializer batches metrics efficiently, reducing network overhead by minimizing the number of HTTP POST requests. This integration allows users to quickly leverage metrics in ServiceNow for enhanced observability, proactive incident management, and performance monitoring, with ServiceNow’s operational intelligence capabilities.

Configuration

Netflow

[[inputs.netflow]]
  ## Address to listen for netflow,ipfix or sflow packets.
  ##   example: service_address = "udp://:2055"
  ##            service_address = "udp4://:2055"
  ##            service_address = "udp6://:2055"
  service_address = "udp://:2055"

  ## Set the size of the operating system's receive buffer.
  ##   example: read_buffer_size = "64KiB"
  ## Uses the system's default if not set.
  # read_buffer_size = ""

  ## Protocol version to use for decoding.
  ## Available options are
  ##   "ipfix"      -- IPFIX / Netflow v10 protocol (also works for Netflow v9)
  ##   "netflow v5" -- Netflow v5 protocol
  ##   "netflow v9" -- Netflow v9 protocol (also works for IPFIX)
  ##   "sflow v5"   -- sFlow v5 protocol
  # protocol = "ipfix"

  ## Private Enterprise Numbers (PEN) mappings for decoding
  ## This option allows to specify vendor-specific mapping files to use during
  ## decoding.
  # private_enterprise_number_files = []

  ## Log incoming packets for tracing issues
  # log_level = "trace"

ServiceNow

[[outputs.http]]
  ## ServiceNow MID Server metrics endpoint
  url = "http://mid-server.example.com:9082/api/mid/sa/metrics"

  ## HTTP request method
  method = "POST"

  ## Basic Authentication credentials
  username = "evt.integration"
  password = "P@$$w0rd!"

  ## Data serialization format for ServiceNow
  data_format = "nowmetric"

  ## Metric format type: "oi" (default) or "jsonv2"
  nowmetric_format = "oi"

  ## HTTP Headers
  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/json"
    Accept = "application/json"

  ## Optional timeout
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## TLS configuration options
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

Input and output integration examples

Netflow

1. Traffic Analysis and Visualization: Use the Netflow plugin to collect traffic flow data and visualize it in real-time using an analytics platform. Administrators can create dashboards that display traffic patterns and anomalies, helping them understand bandwidth usage and user behavior.

2. Network Performance Optimization: Integrate the Netflow plugin with performance monitoring tools to identify bottlenecks and optimize the network. Analyze collected metrics to pinpoint areas where network resources can be improved, enhancing overall system performance.

3. Anomaly Detection for Security: Leverage the Netflow data for security analysis by feeding it into an anomaly detection system. This can help identify unusual traffic patterns that may indicate potential security threats, enabling quicker responses to prevent breaches.

4. Customized Alerts for Network Events: Configure threshold-based alerts using the Netflow plugin metrics to notify network administrators of unusual spikes or drops in traffic. This proactive monitoring can help in quickly addressing potential issues before they escalate.

ServiceNow

1. Proactive Incident Management: Utilize the Telegraf and ServiceNow integration to stream infrastructure and application metrics in real-time to ServiceNow Event Management. Automatically trigger incidents or remediation workflows based on thresholds, significantly reducing incident detection and response times.

2. End-to-End Application Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across multiple layers of an application stack, sending performance metrics directly into ServiceNow. Leveraging ServiceNow’s Operational Intelligence, teams can correlate metrics across components, quickly identifying performance bottlenecks.

3. Dynamic CI Performance Tracking: Integrate Telegraf metrics with ServiceNow’s CMDB by using this plugin to push performance data, allowing automatic updates of Configuration Item (CI) health states based on live metrics. This ensures an accurate and current state of infrastructure health in ServiceNow.

4. Cloud Resource Optimization: Collect metrics from hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures using Telegraf, streaming directly to ServiceNow. Leverage these metrics for real-time analytics, predictive capacity planning, and resource optimization, enabling proactive management and reduced operational costs.

Feedback

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