Configuring streaming to Event Streams through the UI

Prereqs

• Create an Event Streams instance.

  a. Log in to the IBM Cloud console.

  b. Access the Event Streams service in the Catalog.

  c. Select the plan on the service instance page.

  d. Enter a name for your service. You can use the default value.

  e. Click Create. The Event Streams Getting started page opens.

• Check the limitations of the service plans. For more information, see Limits and quotas.

Step 1. Create a topic in Event Streams

Complete the following steps to create an Event Streams topic:

1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.

   After you log in with your user ID and password, the IBM Cloud dashboard opens.

2. Click the Menu icon > Resource list.

3. Look for the Event Streams instance that you plan to use, and select it.

4. Select Topics.

5. Click Create a topic.

   

6. Enter a topic name and click Next.

   

7. Enter the number of partitions and click Next.

   One or more partitions make up a topic. A partition is an ordered list of messages. Partitions are distributed across the brokers in order to increase the scalability of your topic. You can also use them to distribute messages across the members of a consumer group.

   

8. Select a Message retention and click Create Topic.

   Message retention defines how long messages are retained before they are deleted. If your messages are not read by a consumer within this time, they will be missed.

Step 2. Create credentials to authenticate the auditing instance with Event Streams

You need the following information to connect the IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instance to the Event Streams instance:

• Endpoint URLs to call the APIs
• Credentials for authentication

Complete the following steps to create service credentials that the IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instance needs to communicate with the Event Streams instance:

1. In the IBM Cloud, click the Menu icon > Resource list.

2. Look for the Event Streams instance that you plan to use, and select it.

3. In the Event Streams console, click Service credentials.

4. Select New credential.

5. Enter a name and select the writer role.

   

6. Click Add.

To restrict access to 1 topic, complete the following steps:

1. From the menu bar, click Manage > Access (IAM), and select Service IDS.

   

2. Select the service ID.

3. Select Access policies.

4. Select the policy and modify it to specify the topic.

   

   

You can get credentials by using the IBM Cloud CLI and make note of the api key and broker URL values.

Step 3. Configure the connection in Activity Tracker to Event Streams

Complete the following steps to configure the connection in Activity Tracker to Event Streams:

1. Launch the IBM Cloud Activity Tracker web UI.

2. Select the Settings icon . Then select Streaming > Configuration.

3. Enter the following information:

   1. In the Username field, enter the value token.

   2. In the Password field, enter the api_key that is associated with the service credential that you want to use to authenticate Activity Tracker with Event Streams.

   3. In the Bootstrap Server URL section, enter the kafka_brokers_sasl values that are listed in the service credential.

      You must enter each URL as individual entries. If you need to add additional URLs, click Add another URL to add each additional URL.

   4. Enter the name of a topic.

   5. Click Save.

   6. A message will be displayed indicating that sample lines are sent that can be used to verify your connection.

      

Step 4. Verify sample data can reach the topic in Event Streams

To continue, you must verify that sample data can reach the topic in Event Streams.

To verify that sample data is streaming, you can use IBM Cloud Monitoring.

1. Check that you have an instance of Monitoring in the same region as your Event Streams instance. This instance must be configured to collect platform metrics. For more information, see Enabling platform metrics.

2. Launch the Monitoring UI.

3. In the Dashboards section, go to Dashboard templates and select the template IBM Event Streams (Enterprise).

4. Create a copy of the template by clicking Create custom dashboard.

5. Edit the panel Topic bytes in per second.

   

6. Customize the metric to see data per topic.

   

7. Check that the resolution is set to 10M.

If you do not see data, do 1 of the following:

• Resend sample logs to verify that sample data is streaming.
• Check my setup to go back to the configuration panel. After you make your changes, retry the verification steps.

If you see data, click YES.

After you provision an instance of Event Streams, the Monitoring dashboard may take up to 15 mins to show.

Step 5. Start streaming

After you verify that sample data is reaching Event Streams, click Start stream.

Streaming may take up to 15 minutes to begin.