Raw events are passed to VMware Smart Assurance NOTIF through adapters after being normalized into a common structure. This structure provides the required basic event information and additional data used for further processing. The format of the data stream is a pipe-separated ("|") string as shown below:
< eventTimeStamp >|< eventAgent >|< eventBaseID >|< eventSub1ID >|< eventSub2ID >|< Keyword1 | Value1 >| < Keyword2 | Value2 >.....
The pipe-separated data stream includes the following information:
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eventTimeStamp — Event occurrence time in UNIX time format; seconds since the Epoch
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eventAgent — Agent name or IP address
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eventBaseID — dot-separated hierarchical identifier string (abc.123.XYZ….)
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(for example, enterprise for SNMP)
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eventSub1ID — General identifier (generic trap number for SNMP)
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eventSub2ID — Specific identifier (specific trap number for SNMP)
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Keyword1|Value1 — Keyword|value pair (OID1|value for SNMP)
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Keyword2|Value2 — Keyword|value pair (OID2|value for SNMP)
The eventBaseID, eventSub1ID, and eventSub2ID parameters are used as the unique event identifiers to match with ECI objects. The number of Keyword|Value pairs is variable. Event IDs may use all three fields, the first two, or only the eventBaseID; it depends on the raw events being processed.
For specific adapters, the adapter documentation provides details to obtain information on the composition of the ID strings and the Keyword|Value pair mapping.
Note:VMware Smart Assurance NOTIF replaces pipe character ("|") in field.(varbind) by double dashes ("--") to process the raw event.