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dougmcclure.net

thoughts on business, service and technology operations and management in the digital transformation era

The main TBSM v6.1 documentation is now online and available here. A documentation landing page is available here for quick access to previous versions of TBSM documentation. PDFs are available for download here.

The TBSM v6.1 Release Notes are available here.

The new TBSM v6.1 wiki is located here. The old TBSM wiki is located here. Content is being migrated to the new wiki.

The TBSM Support homepage is here.

A searchable interface for all TBSM Support content is available here. The RSS feed for all TBSM Support content is available here.

The first place you should start your planning activities is the by closely reviewing the Exploring TBSM : Planning section located here. Read it again and again. Don’t start deployment without carefully considering these high level areas and then performing more detailed research into key topics such as architecture, platform and server requirements, installation types and options, end user browser and JRE support, etc. A more detailed planning overview is available in the Installation Guide available here.

A high level installation overview is available here. The detailed installation procedures are available here.

Migration from a previous version of TBSM 4.2.x requires significant planning and forethought. I do not recommend performing outright migrations or upgrades without significant consideration of key areas such as architecture, platform and system provisioning (32b vrs 64b, CPU/Mem), BSM event management design, key designs for data/template/structure/behavior/navigation/visualization models, etc. with significant focus on how the previous deployment of TBSM v4.2.x can be optimized, improved, and provide increased value for both the administrator and end users by exploiting new capability, feature and function in the new TBSM v6.1 release.

Migration planning information is available here.

As an alternative to an outright migration, I would recommend performing a “selective migration” where the legacy TBSM v4.2.x system is migrated to a temporary TBSM v.6.1 system using the procedures described in the manuals above. Once all of the content has been migrated to the temporary TBSM v6.1 system, you can then use the new and greatly improved export capabilities to “selectively export and migrate” content to a more permanent build (sandbox/dev/test) and fresh installation of TBSM v6.1. These new and greatly improved export/import capabilities offer signficant administrative control at granular levels for what can be moved between TBSM v6.1 systems. I’ll spend more time discussing these features in follow on posts.

That’s all for today.

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Over the years, I’ve tried to use my blog as a platform to ‘preach’ the need for approaching Business Service Management (BSM) with considerable thought, research, discussion, transformation/change and ultimately design and architecture to be successful. These tenets become especially true when using the IBM Tivoli BSM portfolio and the Tivoli Business Service Manager (TBSM) product.

I believe that every major product release milestone offers opportunities to step back and reevaluate the current state of your deployment. I’m not a fan of upgrading or migrating without significant and thorough review of what has been successful, not successful, where you’ve had administrative challenges, product availability and performance challenges or where things can just be improved upon by just starting over, taking a different approach, leveraging a new feature or capability, etc.

If you always do what you’ve always done, you should expect the same results that you’ve always got! If you’re really sure that you’re delivering a quality solution that provides consistent and measurable value, that’s great! You should strive to continue to do that. However, do you really want to just push the “upgrade” button? If your end users think what you deliver is “crap”, do you really want to upgrade and get “higher performing crap”? 🙂

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll try to highlight some of the key areas I think you should consider when thinking about your plans for a TBSM v6.1 deployment, upgrade or migration as well as key differences and improvements over previous versions of TBSM.

For starters, here are some things to bring you up to speed on the new TBSM v6.1 release which is officially GA today via your normal channels.

Release Announcement

Documentation Central (should have 6.1 docs this week)

Important new key features for V6.1:

Enhanced user interface (UI) with self-service dashboard capabilities
Drag-and-drop dashboard creation with free form page layout
Portlet palette and catalogue support for simplified content selection
Widget builder support including hover preview and save to palette
Customization of look and feel – logos, titles, colors
Ability to remove portlet padding and title bars to maximize screen real estate
Improved export and import capability for UI customization
Simplified security administration with ability to manage by roles

Impact integration
Enhanced data access and automation with integrated Tivoli Netcool/Impact
Common UI in IBM Tivoli Integrated Portal (TIP)
Common Administration of policies, data sources, services

Service model creation

Automated rule-based service model composition
Resource enrichment capability with impact policies

Enhanced reporting
IBM Tivoli Common Reporting (TCR) V2.1 including Cognos® metadata model
Data abstraction and modeling simplifies report creation and customization
Simplified report editing and ad-hoc reporting

Infrastructure updates
Update UI built on TIP V2.2
Export and import of configuration data from development to production systems
64-bit platform support
DB2® replacement of the PostgreSQL back end database

Integration
Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager integration enhancements for performance, data integrity, and customization
Virtualization, green energy, and IBM Director solutions
Continued cadence with Tivoli Event Pump for z/OS

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Bookmarks for July 12th through July 27th

in General

These are my links for July 12th through July 27th:

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