Setting Up an External Event Broker with Event Portal Connection

If you're unable to connect your event brokers to Event Portal using a PubSub+ Cloud connection, you can install one or more Event Management Agents to connect event broker services with Event Portal. You need to use Event Management Agents to create a connection in these circumstances:

You want to connect to event broker services in a Public Region or a different PubSub+ Cloud account.
You want to connect to Solace software event brokers or appliances.
You want to connect to Kafka event brokers, version 2.5 or later, and optionally, Confluent Schema Registry version 6.2 and later.
Your security requirements don't allow a PubSub+ Cloud connection between your operational event brokers and Event Portal.

You connect event brokers with Event Portal using an Event Management Agent in two steps:

Setting Up an External Connection
Setting Up the Event Management Agent

After you have set up your connection to Event Portal, you may have to occasionally update the Event Management Agent. For more information, see Updating an Event Management Agent.

You may choose at a later date to move to a PubSub+ Cloud connection to connect your event broker services with Event Portal, in which case you can delete the Event Management Agent. For more information, see Deleting an Event Management Agent

Setting Up an External Connection

To set up an external event broker connection with Event Portal using an Event Management Agent, perform these steps:

Log in to the PubSub+ Cloud Console if you have not done so yet. The URL to access the Cloud Console differs based on your authentication scheme. For more information, see Logging In to the PubSub+ Cloud Console.
On the navigation bar, select Runtime Event Manager.
Click More Actions > Manage Event Management Agents.
In the top-right corner, click Set Up Event Management Agent.
Enter a Name for the Event Management Agent.
Select an Agent Mode.
- Connected—Uses one Event Management Agent that is connected to both Event Portal and to one or more runtime event brokers. This mode allows you to run discovery scans from Event Portal and automatically upload the scanned data. If you want to send runtime configuration data from Event Portal to Solace event brokers, you must use this mode.
- Offline—Uses two Event Management Agents; one is connected to Event Portal and the other is connected to one or more runtime event brokers. The agent connected to your event brokers runs the discovery scan. You upload the scan file to Event Portal manually by copying it to the connected agent. This mode does not support runtime configuration from Event Portal.
  
  Use Offline mode only if your organization's security policies don't allow you to connect your operational event brokers to Event Portal or you want to redact sensitive data from scan files before manually uploading the data to Event Portal.
Click Manage Event Brokers to select one or more event brokers.

The list shows all model event brokers and all PubSub+ Cloud event broker services that are not already associated with an Event Management Agent. You can filter the list by name and by event broker type.
Click Add next to the event brokers you want to create a connection for. If the event broker has not already been added to a modeled event mesh, see Adding an Event Broker to a Modeled Event Mesh.
If you need to create a new model event broker, perform these steps:
1. Click Add New Connection.
2. Select Solace or Kafka as the event broker Type.
3. Enter a Name for the model event broker.
4. Add the connection details for the event broker. For more information, see the instructions to add an event broker to a modeled event mesh.
5. Click Connect Event Broker.
Click Save and Set Up Agent.

Runtime Event Manager begins walking you through setting up the Event Management Agent.

Setting Up the Event Management Agent

After you set up an external connection, Runtime Event Manager walks you through the Event Management Agent set-up process for the agent mode you chose:

If you selected Connected, Runtime Event Manager guides you to set up one Event Management Agent that is connected to both Event Portal and one or more runtime event brokers. For more information, see Setting Up an Event Management Agent to Run Scans from Event Portal.
If you selected Offline, Runtime Event Manager guides you to set up two Event Management Agents, one connected to runtime event brokers and the other connected to Event Portal. The agent connected to your event brokers runs the discovery scan. You upload the scan file to Event Portal manually by copying it to the connected agent. For more information, see Setting Up Event Management Agents to Upload Scanned Files.

If you need to update an Event Management Agent to either upgrade the agent or update the event broker connection information, see Updating an Event Management Agent.

Updating an Event Management Agent

You may need to update an Event Management Agent to add event brokers or schema registries, update connection details, or upgrade the Event Management Agent itself. If an Event Management Agent is not the latest version. Runtime Event Manager displays an upgrade notification in the Event Management Agents list:

Screenshot showing the elements described in the surrounding text.

Event Management Agent version 1.2.0 and later displays the version number in the information panel.

To update Event Management Agent connection details, perform these steps:

On the navigation bar, select Runtime Event Manager.
Click More Actions > Manage Event Management Agents.
Click More Actionsfor the Event Management Agent that you want to update.
Select Edit Connection Details.
Update the Event Management Agent settings as required. You can update everything except the Agent Mode.
Repeat the steps for Setting Up an External Event Broker with Event Portal Connection and Setting Up an External Event Broker with Event Portal Connection
Repeat the installation

To upgrade an Event Management Agent that uses Connected mode without updating the connection details, you need only to pull a new Event Management Agent image from Docker and restart it:

Pull the Event Management Agent image from Docker Hub using the following command:
```
docker pull solace/event-management-agent
```

Start the agent in your OS terminal using the following command:

Replace /path/to/file/AcmeRetail.yml with the path to your connection file.

docker run -d -p 8180:8180 -v /path/to/file/AcmeRetail.yml:/config/ema.yml 
--name event-management-agent solace/event-management-agent:latest

If an Event Management Agent uses Offline mode, see Setting Up the Event Management Agents to upgrade the Event Management Agent

Deleting an Event Management Agent

If you no longer need an Event Management Agent, you can delete the Event Management Agent Connection in Event Portal and then uninstall the Event Management Agent.

To delete an Event Management Agent Connection, perform these steps:

On the navigation bar, select Runtime Event Manager .
Click More Actions and select Manage Event Management Agents.
Click More Actionsfor the Event Management Agent that you no longer need.
Select Delete from Event Portal.
Click Delete Connection.

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