How to create a BSM group

Overview

The Business Service Monitoring (BSM) feature, accessible under the Business option in GroundWork Monitor, provides the capability to represent the condition of business groups, processes and applications according to the combined states of individually monitored hosts and services.

The method allows the free combining of hosts, services and/or groups as components of named groups. The combinations can be assigned numerical values to weigh or qualify the member items. In this way we can produce a hierarchical representation of the state of business services independently of the methods used to monitor components.

Notifications and state changes of BSM groups are integrated into the GroundWork Monitor system using the Notification Manager (NoMa) engine and the Event Console for further processing. Creating BSM entities and enabling them does not require configuration changes and subsequent commits.

1.0 Creating a BSM group

To create a BSM group start by going to (1) Business > Business Service Monitoring, select the (2) Manage groups tab. You may notice the default GroundWork Monitor and any other previously defined groups in this tab along with corresponding icons representing edit, delete, and tree view options. To define a new group click (3) Create.

Figure: Create new group

After selecting the Create button the group definition page is displayed (shown below). Here you can define what makes up the BSM group and how it should be monitored. We use the default example to describe each of the sections components. The entries for (1) Display, Description, Note, Info Text and URL fields are referenced in various Business and Status screens.

Checking the box for (2) Monitoring enables monitoring for this group, meaning the results will show up in the View groups tab and in Status viewer.

When the monitoring box is checked the (3) Host Definition, Service Definition, Hostgroup, and Priority fields are exposed. The Host Definition and Service Definition entries are a named host / service in which the BSM check process will send the check results, these can be monitored names or representative business service names. Group Members, assigned further down, are associated with these definitions. The Hostgroup definition is a named host group in which the BSM host will be added. You can set a Priority of High, Medium, or Low for each group, you can then indicate only High priority groups to be displayed within the View groups tab.

Checking the (4) Thresholds box enables thresholds to be set for this group which are reflected in the Views groups tab and in the Status viewer. If the In percent box is checked the Critical and Warning threshold options switch from count of problems, that must be reached in a group before the state changes to Critical or Warning, to a percent of problems. If this is set to 0 every problem will count. You can then indicate specific states to be counted as problems, by default all states are selected excluding UP and OK.

When creating a new BSM group you will need to first indicate Group Members before setting Thresholds.

Finally, the bottom section lists (5) Available Members which are members that are available to be added to the (6) Group Members to be monitored. These members can include hosts, services, service groups, and business service monitoring groups. Using the filter you can find specific available members and then add them to the group members. Indicating a member as Essential enables that member to decide the entire groups state, non-essential members cluster together. The state is calculated on the threshold settings.

Figure: Group definition

2.0 Managing BSM in Status

Now we look at the results of the GroundWork Monitor BSM group configured to monitor localhost with core services.

The Status tree quickly shows the state of the group at the top level. The top level BSM host group, (1) BSM: Business Objects, uses the bubble-up status feature and indicates the most severe state for the overall group based on essential settings and defined thresholds. The BSM host group contains the Host Definition BSM:bsm-host which contains the Service Definition bsm-service-01 with group status for the selected hosts, services, service groups and business service monitoring group members.

If you entered text for the (2) Note field in the definition, it will be displayed here. And under (3) Status Information the details for the group are shown.

Figure: Status view of BSM

3.0 Managing BSM in View groups

Here we look again at the results of the GroundWork Monitor BSM group, however this time through the View groups tab versus the Status view.

Selecting (1) Business > Business Service Monitoring, you will see in the first tab (2) View groups.

A list of configured (3) BSM groups will be displayed. Like the Status view the top level indicates the most severe state of the group based on its thresholds (or essential selections). This example shows a CRITICAL status. Refreshing of BSM groups takes place every 30 seconds. In the example you can see the group described as GroundWork Monitor which has an active URL for quick access to related reference, 1 problem(s) again based on the thresholds or essential selections, and if thresholds were set a count indicator W/C #/# would be displayed showing the defined thresholds for Warning and Critical.

The (4) pencil icon is a direct edit button which goes to the groups definition page versus selecting a group from the Manage groups tab.

(5) Monitoring only, when checked, will display only groups that have Monitoring checked in the definition, and High priority, when checked, will display only groups with a priority set to High in the definition.

Figure: View groups - top level

Clicking the (1) arrow next to the group name exposes the groups status detail. (2) Members not in a problem state will be summarized, shown here as 6 Members are running in good situations. Members in a problem state would display the host name, service name, and type of problem including Acknowledged or Downtime.

Figure: View groups - quick status

Continuing down the levels, clicking the status indicator (e.g., OK, shown above) (1) exposes the groups members and their states based on the configured thresholds, along with host and service drill-down ability to Status viewer for device details.

Figure: View groups - group details