BSM End-to-End Workflow: Step 5. Create and Enrich Data Model

After setting up your data collection environment, the data sent to BSM populates an extensive set of application infrastructure, Web service, and business transaction CIs in the RTSM, and provides information on relationships between the CIs. Using common data models, BSM automatically creates a data model (the IT Universe Model) representing the overall monitored IT environment.

You can customize the data model implementation according to your business needs, as described in the following topics.

Create Business Model

You can manually define logical business CIs to represent your business entities, such as Business Service or Line of Business.

Tip: If you have a CMS system with a central UCMDB, it is recommended that you create and model the Business Service CIs in the CMS, and then synchronize them into BSM.

Customize Views and Performance Indicators

BSM provides out-of-the-box business views containing CIs, and performance indicators (KPIs and HIs) to monitor and manage the status of your IT infrastructure and business processes. You can define customized views and performance indicators to provide the specific monitoring information required by your organization's BSM users.

Manage Downtime

Downtime in your IT environment, or scheduled maintenance and other events, can skew CI data. You can exclude these periods of time from the indicator performance calculations for your applications and infrastructure.

You configure downtime for CIs in Downtime Management in Platform Administration. For details, see "How to Create and Manage Downtimes for CIs" in the Platform Administration Guide.

Define Custom Locations

Define geographical and logical location CIs to attach to other CIs. These locations can be used to organize and filter CIs by location. Each location can be assigned ranges of IP addresses that have been designated for use by devices in a certain geographical area.

Create the locations to monitor using Location Manager in Platform Administration. For details, see "Location Manager" in the Platform Administration Guide.

Customize Content Packs

Content packs contain enrichment information for configuration items (CIs) used in BSM.

BSM provides a number of content packs for Smart Plug-ins (SPIs) that help you to use data provided by Operations Manager and start monitoring your environment. You can use content packs in the default configuration or, if necessary, modify to suit the demands of your environment. Content packs placed in the content packs folders are uploaded automatically during installation and subsequent restarts of the BSM Gateway Server. For details on content packs for Operations Management, see "Content Packs" in the BSM Application Administration Guide.

You may need to import additional content packs for other SPIs communicating with Operations Management. You may also need to import content packs for BSM integrations with external products, or create and customize content packs for BSM according to your organization's requirements. Content packs are managed using the Content Packs Manager. For details, see "How to Create and Manage Content Packs" in the Platform Administration Guide.

To learn more about content packs, see Content Packs.

Extend the Data Model

BSM provides you with various ways to extend the data model repositories and components stored in the RTSM, and to customize the out-of-the-box RTSM modeling structures:

To learn more, see Run-time Service Model (RTSM), and Understanding BSM: Modeling.