Our TADDM product has a pretty nifty capability to help it along in its discovery process. You have an option to create files called Application Descriptors that are simple XML files that describe what business applications are deployed onto the server, what components make up the application and how these various components are organized, grouped or have relationship to the business application. Examples of TADDM Application Descriptors are available here.
What if we took this extremely simple concept and turned it into something for the ITM 6.x BSM Profile? What if we had a BSM Descriptor File? It may contain many different sub-components that help me to express the unique characteristics of what this server and installed software do to support business services and applications.
The BSM Descriptor File may contain:
- Business Service Descriptors: Information on the business service(s) this component supports/enables
- Business Application Descriptors: Information on the business application(s) this component supports/enables
- Transaction, Process or Activity Descriptors: Information on key transactions, processes, daemons, batch jobs, etc. that this component supports/enables
- Impact Descriptors: Information on how this component may impact the business goals and objectives, revenue, customer experience, metrics, KPIs, etc.
- Compliance Descriptors: Information on compliance controls that this component must adhere to.
- Risk Descriptors: Information on business risks that may be associated with this component
- Security Descriptors: Information on security policies applied to this component
- Business Schedule or Calendar Descriptors: Information on when there may be important times during the day, week, month that this component may need to be managed differently (end of month batch jobs, financial runs, maintenance windows)
- Operations Support Descriptors: Information about the on call group, escalation paths, etc.
Part of the XML tagging within the BSM Descriptor File should include annotation on how these unique components are mapped into events generated from individual ITM 6.x monitoring agents and their BSM Profile. With this information flowing freely into the event stream, making use of the powerful capabilities within Netcool/OMNIbus and TBSM 4.x become very easy. These BSM Descriptor concept maps very nicely to the TBSM Design Patterns that I’m also currently blogging about.
In an effort to collaborate on how to create such a BSM Descriptor and the ITM 6.x BSM Profile, DevCampTivoli has been created. The theme for this event is “Collaborative Development of End-to-End BSM Solutions”. The desired outcome is to come up various approaches for developing a BSM Descriptor File and BSM Profile for ITM 6.x, necessary configurations within the Tivoli EIF probe, Netcool/OMNIbus and TBSM 4.x that can be easily customized and implemented at any client. Whatever the DevCampTivoli produces will be freely available to anyone to take, modify and use to improve their BSM deployments.
Take a few minutes to visit DevCampTivoli. This event will be the May 17-18, 2008 which is the weekend before the annual IBM Tivoli User Conference Pulse 2008 in Orlando, FL. The thought and hope is that SME’s and practitioners in ITM, Netcool/OMNIbus and TBSM will already be coming to Pulse 2008 and will be able to come in a couple days earlier to participate.
More to follow…
Comments on this entry are closed.