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Forwarding events to an email service using SMTP

You can configure Lenovo XClarity Orchestrator to forward specific events to one or more email addresses using SMTP.

Before you begin

Attention
A secure connection is not established when forwarding data to this service. Data is sent over a clear text protocol.

To forward email to a web-based email service (such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo), your SMTP server must support forwarding web mail.

Before setting up an event forwarder to a Gmail web service, review information in Forwarding events to a Gmail SMTP service.

About this task

If resource-based access control is enabled, data is forwarded for only those resources that you can access using access-control lists. If you are not a member of a group to which the predefined Supervisor role is assigned, you must assign one or more access-control lists to the forwarders that you create. If you want to send data for all resources that you can access, select all access-control lists that are associated that are available to you. If you are a member of a group to which the predefined Supervisor role is assigned, you can choose to send data for all resources, or you can choose to assign access control lists to limit the resources.

Common data-forwarding filters are used to define the scope of events that you want to forward, based on event codes, event classes, event severities, service types, and resource that generated the event. Ensure that the event and resource filters that you want to use for this forwarder are already created (see Creating data-forwarding filters).

The following example shows the default format for data that is forwarded to an email service. Words between double square brackets are attributes that are replaced with actual values when data is forwarded.
Email subject
Event Forwarding
Email body
{
   "groups": [],
   "acls": [],
   "local": null,
   "eventID": "FQXHMEM0216I",
   "severity": "Warning",
   "sourceID": "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF",
   "componentID": "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF",
   "msg": "The event forwarder destination cannot be reached. Therefore new events are not being
           forwarded.",
   "description": "The event forwarder destination cannot be reached. Therefore new events are not
                   being forwarded.",
   "userAction": "Look in the online documentation to determinate more information about this event
                  based on the eventID. At the moment the orchestrator server can not offer more
                  information.",
   "recoveryURL": null,
   "flags": [],
   "userid": null,
   "action": "None",
   "eventClass": "System",
   "args": [],
   "service": "None",
   "lxcaUUID": "23C87F0A2CB6491097489193447A655C",
   "managerID": "23C87F0A2CB6491097489193447A655C",
   "failFRUNumbers": null,
   "failFRUSNs": null,
   "failFRUUUIDs": "[FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF]",
   "msgID": null,
   "timeStamp": "2021-03-12T18:32:14.000Z",
   "eventDate": "2021-03-12T18:32:14Z",
   "commonEventID": "FQXHMEM0216I",
   "sequenceNumber": "17934247",
   "details": null,
   "device": {
      "name": "xhmc194.labs.lenovo.com",
      "mtm": null,
      "serialNumber": null
   },
   "resourceType": "XClarity Administrator",
   "componentType": "XClarity Administrator",
   "sourceType": "Management",
   "resourceName": "xhmc194.labs.lenovo.com",
   "fruType": "other",
   "ipAddress": "10.243.2.107",
   "_id": 252349
}

Procedure

To forward data to an email service using SMTP, complete the following steps.

  1. From the XClarity Orchestrator menu bar, click Monitoring (Monitoring icon) > Forwarding, and then click Data Forwarders in the left navigation to display the Data Forwarders card.
  2. Click the Create icon (Add icon) to display the Create Data Forwarder dialog.
  3. Specify the forwarder name and optional description.
  4. Choose to enable or disable the forwarder by clicking the State toggle.
  5. Select Email as the forwarder type.
  6. Click Configuration, and fill in the protocol-specific information.
    • Enter the hostname or IP address of the SMTP server.
    • Enter the port to use for forwarding events. The default is 25.
    • Enter the time-out period (in seconds) for the request. Default is 30 seconds.
    • Enter the email address for each recipient. Separate multiple email addresses by using a comma.
    • Optional: Enter the email address for the sender of the email (for example, john@company.com) and the sender domain.

      If you do not specify an email address, the sender address is LXCO.<source_identifier>@<smtp_host> by default.

      If you specify only the sender domain, the format of the sender address is <LXCO_host_name>@<sender_domain> (for example, XClarity1@company.com).

      Note
      • If you set up your SMTP server to require a hostname to forward email, and you do not set up a hostname for XClarity Orchestrator, it is possible that the SMTP server might reject forwarded events. If XClarity Orchestrator does not have a hostname, the event is forwarded with the IP address. If the IP address cannot be obtained, “localhost” is sent instead, which might cause the SMTP server to reject the event.
      • If you specify the sender domain, the source does not identify in the sender address. Instead, information about the source of the event is included in the body of the email, including system name, IP address, type/model, and serial number.
      • If the SMTP server accepts only emails that were sent by a registered user, the default sender address (LXCO.<source_identifier}@{smtp_host>) is rejected. In this case, you must specify at least a domain name in the From User field.
    • To establish a secure connection to the SMTP server, select one of the following connection types.
      • SSL. Uses the SSL protocol to form a secure communication.
      • STARTTLS. Uses the TLS protocol to form a secure communication over an unsecure channel.

      If one of these connection types is selected, XClarity Orchestrator attempts to download and import the SMTP server’s certificate to the XClarity Orchestrator truststore. You are prompted to accept this certificate.

    • If authentication is required, select one of the following authentication types.
      • Regular. Authenticates to the specified SMTP server using the specified user ID and password.
      • OAUTH2. Uses the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) protocol to authenticate to the specified SMTP server using the specified username and security token. Typically, the username is your email address.
        Attention
        The security token expires after a short time. It is your responsibility to refresh the security token.
      • None. No authentication is used.
  7. Click Filters, and optionally select the filters that you want to use for this forwarder.

    You can select at most one event filter and one resource filter.

    If you do not select a filter, data is forwarded for all events that are generated by all resources (devices, resource managers, and XClarity Orchestrator).

    From this tab, you can also choose to forward excluded event by setting the Excluded Events toggle to Yes.

  8. Click Access Control Lists, and select one or more access-control lists that you want to associated with this forwarder.

    If resource-based access is enabled, you must select at least one access-control list.

    Tip
    Users that are members of a group to which the predefined Supervisor role is assigned can optionally select Match Everything instead of selecting an access control lists so that forwarded data is not restricted.
  9. Click Create to create the forwarder.

After you finish

You can perform the following actions from the Data Forwarders card.

  • Enable or disable a selected forwarder by selecting the toggle in the State column
  • Modify a selected forwarder by clicking the Edit icon (Edit icon).
  • Remove a selected forwarder by clicking the Delete icon (Delete icon).