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.
- You map the business CIs to a topology of CIs that represent the underlying processes and infrastructure supporting the business entity. The business CIs are added to your business views, so that the views display information organized according to your organization's business needs. You can manually create CIs and relationships that represent logical and physical elements of the business using IT Universe Manager in RTSM Administration. For details, see "Working with CIs" in the Modeling Guide.
- You define service CIs (Business Service and Infrastructure Service) that represent the services provided by, or consumed by, your organization, such as project management services, or directory services. These CIs are used as the basis of your model, and also to build service level agreements, and can be defined from the Service Level Management application (in addition to defining them within the RTSM Administration application). For details, see "How to Define a Service for an SLA – Use-Case Scenario" in the BSM Application Administration Guide.
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.
- Define views: There are two types of views: global views in RTSM and local impact views.
- For details on creating global views in RTSM, see "Modeling Studio Overview" in the Modeling Guide.
- For details on creating local impact views, see "View Builder - Creating Global Views and Local Impact Views" in the BSM Application Administration Guide.
When creating any type of view, you can use the impact perspective to see the application and its underlying transactions and infrastructure.
- Define KPIs and HIs: For details, see "Configuring KPIs and HIs - Overview" in the BSM Application Administration Guide. For an overview of working with KPIs and HIs, see "How to Customize Calculations in Service Health" in the BSM Application Administration Guide.
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:
- Enrich the topology. You can integrate RTSM with other data sources to enrich the topological data in the RTSM. The data source can be another RTSM instance, another HP product such as HP Service Manager or HP Release Control (integrated though a CMS), or a third-party product.
For details, see "Integrating Multiple CMDBs" in the Data Flow Management Guide, and the HP RTSM Best Practices Guide.
- Create TQLs. You can create TQL queries to retrieve business service data from the RTSM, and to display the data in views.
For details, see "Define a TQL Query" in the Modeling Guide.
- Define enrichment rules. You can use the Enrichment Manager to define enrichment rules that add CIs, CI attributes, and relationships to the RTSM. Enrichment query nodes and relationships are created within a TQL query context, and the received data is used to insert new information, that cannot be discovered automatically by the Discovery process, into the RTSM.
For details, see "Define an Enrichment Rule – Scenario" in the Modeling Guide.
- Create CITs and relationships. You can use the CI Type Manager to create new CI types, and new relationships between CIs in the RTSM, to match your business needs.
Note: You should carry out a planning phase before you actually create new CITs and relationships, as they are likely to impact the rest of your data model.
For details, see "Create a CI Type" and "Create a Relationship Type" in the Modeling Guide.
- Manage packages. Packages are used to discover specific IT assets and CI types. You can use the Package Manager to edit packages, or create custom packages, if the factory packages do not contain the resources you need for the tools you develop or if you want to export resources from one system to another.
For details, see "Create a Custom Package" in the RTSM Administration Guide.
To learn more, see Run-time Service Model (RTSM), and Understanding BSM: Modeling.