Select the integration type, such as API, alerting thresholds, open telemetry, and ITSM for the requested data
Overview
When an alert is triggered by your networking monitoring system, the relevant data should be presented somewhere that an engineer can see it and take action. When designing and implementing a networking monitoring solution, it is important to consider the different ways that data and alerts can be presented, exported, or integrated into other platforms to appropriately react to network events based on your business needs. This section will examine the different kinds of integrations available for exporting and presenting data from ThousandEyes.
API
An Application Programming Interface (API) allows third-party tools to interact with another application. ThousandEyes offers an API that lets you list and create synthetic tests, configure agents, and perform many other administrative tasks.
APIs can be interacted with in various ways, such as using libraries or packages available for different programming languages or purpose-built third-party tools like Postman. However, designing a system around interacting with APIs can be time-consuming and costly, requiring custom in-house applications or third-party tools.
Examples of Prebuilt API Integrations:
- DNA Center: Deploys monitoring agents (Enterprise Agents) onto devices managed by DNA Center and presents data for monitored applications.
- Meraki: Deploys monitoring agents (Enterprise Agents) onto devices managed by Meraki.
- Webex Control Hub: Deploys end-user monitoring agents (Endpoint Agents) onto devices managed by Webex Control Hub and shows network path data alongside relevant call performance data.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Flexible and can be used to create new tests, view data, and complete other administrative tasks. | Requires labor and overhead to maintain custom applications. |
| Can interact with many different sources and build custom applications. | Can be complicated to set up and is not real-time. |
| Prebuilt integrations with other applications. | Management and storage of results, like alert states or test configurations, are necessary. |
Alert Thresholds
Alert thresholds are essential for notifying about incidents as soon as they occur. They can be configured to trigger notifications when certain conditions are met, with details, including alert status, being queryable via the API. Notifications can be sent via emails to registered platform users or external recipients, through custom webhooks or custom-built integrations.
Custom Webhooks
Webhooks are HTTP requests sent to a target URL to perform an action on that target server using data from the webhook body. Custom webhooks use a templating format to customize the HTTP request body using webhook variables and logic.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow is an IT Service Management (ITSM) tool that can receive webhooks and create service tickets based on the webhook data for engineers to act on.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Email, webhooks, and alert integration methods. | No visibility to test metrics before an alert is triggered. |
| Alert state (triggered/cleared) is managed for you. | |
| Alerts are triggered if certain conditions are met. |
ITSM
IT Service Management (ITSM) Tools allow a team to manage tasks related to the administration and operation of the IT infrastructure. Most ITSMs can ingest webhooks or query APIs to create service requests, tasks, events, or incidents.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Flexible interface to create and manage service requests, incidents, and tasks. | Requires labor and overhead to manage and maintain. |
| Can ingest alerts generated from ThousandEyes and other platforms. | Usefulness depends on the quality and quantity of the data and tools integrated. |
| Becomes more useful as more data and tools are integrated. |
OpenTelemetry
OpenTelemetry is an observability framework that facilitates streaming real-time telemetry data for collection, monitoring, and reporting.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Standardized framework for streaming data to data visualization platforms. | Requires a platform to ingest, store, and visualize the metrics. |
| Real-time streaming of test metrics. | Needs additional components like alerting or visualization tools to make the data useful. |
Resources
- ThousandEyes Developer Documentation
- Getting Started with the ThousandEyes API
- Automation and IT Ops Integration
- ThousandEyes Integration Guides
- Creating and Editing Alert Rules
- Alert Notifications
- Custom-Built Integrations
- OpenTelemetry API
- Data Observability Backend with OpenTelemetry
- What is OpenTelemetry?
- What is ITSM?
Sample Questions
1.7 Question 1
Your organization wants to be notified of an event as soon as it is triggered by an alert threshold. This notification should be sent to your ITSM and generate an incident so it can be responded to appropriately. What kind of integration should you use?
- A) ServiceNow Integration
- B) DNA Center Integration
- C) Custom Webhooks
- D) Alerts API
1.7 Question 2
You have been tasked with creating a dashboard in your organization’s Observability platform. This dashboard should have data that is streamed in real-time and used to populate data for tables, graphs, charts, and other formats. What kind of integration should you use?
- A) API Endpoints
- B) OpenTelemetry
- C) DNA Center Integration
- D) Alert Thresholds
1.7 Question 3
ThousandEyes offers several native integrations for receiving instant event notifications triggered by alerts. Which of the following integrations are available directly within the ThousandEyes platform? Select all that apply.
- A) ServiceNow
- B) PagerDuty
- C) MS Teams
- D) Splunk
- E) AWS
- F) AppDynamics
- G) Webex
- H) Slack
