Service modeling with BMC CMDB

BMC recommends that you use BMC CMDB in conjunction with Infrastructure Management. BMC CMDB provides support for efficient editing of the service model and provides integration with other tools that simplify the process of building the service model.

Working with the service model in BMC CMDB

When Infrastructure Management is integrated with BMC CMDB, you can create or update the service model using Impact Model Designer in the Atrium Core Console.

BMC recommends that you also use BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping to automatically discover, and keep up to date, the infrastructure components, and their relationships, in your environment. 

Publishing the service model from BMC CMDB

After you create a service model in BMC CMDB, the service impact model must be delivered from BMC CMDB to Infrastructure Management. The process of distributing the service model from the source to Infrastructure Management is managed and controlled by the Publishing Server.

Automatic publishing of updates

By default, the Publishing Server initiates a publish of new changes to the service models in the CMDB when a reconciliation job completes a merge into the BMC.ASSET data set. The new changes can include promotions initiated from Impact Model Designer or Atrium Explorer . This can be disabled in the Publishing Server configuration, in which case you have to manually initiate the publish using the publish command.

Splitting models across multiple Infrastructure Management Servers

Service models may be split across multiple Infrastructure Management Servers. You might want to do this when the number of CIs in the service model exceeds 25000.

To publish the models to multiple servers:

• Set the HomeCellAlias attribute of the CIs to the server on which you want the service model to be published.
• Set the HomeCellAlias attribute only at the top most level of the model for which all the provider CIs go to the same server.
• Confine individual service models, as much as possible, to a single Infrastructure Management Server.
• Publish infrastructure CIs to the Infrastructure Management Server that is monitoring the CI and receiving events for the CI.

• Run the Publishing Server with the enterprise mode enabled. By default, the Publishing Server is installed with the enterprise mode disabled (set to false). Edit the pserver.conf file and set Enterprise=T to enable the enterprise mode.

Do not define a default cell, and avoid using the HomeCellAlias default. When a default cell is defined and when HomeCellAlias Default is used (on the top node of a service model or on a PublishOnlyMyself CI), the CI(s) are published to multiple nodes, breaking SIM propagation.

Migrating service models from Infrastructure Management to BMC CMDB

In some environments, service models may have been created in Infrastructure Management before BMC CMDB was implemented or made available. Use the sim2cmdb tool to migrate these service models to BMC CMDB. For information about sim2cmdb, see the sim2cmdb CLI command.

Infrastructure Management may also generate new computer system CIs, and occasionally other CIs, based on components being discovered by BMC PATROL monitors.

• These CIs are not automatically imported into the CMDB.
• After these CIs are discovered by BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping, or otherwise added to the CMDB, the Publishing Server reconciles the CIs from the CMDB with what already exists in Infrastructure Management if these CIs are present in the CMDB. If the CIs are present only in Infrastructure Management but not in the CMDB, then they are either automatically discovered and added to the CMDB by BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping, or manually created in the CMDB or migrated to CMDB using sim2cmdb. For information about sim2cmdb, see the sim2cmdb CLI command.
  

For information about migrating a service model to BMC CMDB, see Migrating a service model to BMC CMDB.

Discovering application infrastructure with BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping

BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping discovers infrastructure CIs (systems, application infrastructure, applications) and populates this data into BMC CMDB. You can use the new Collaborative Application Mapping feature of BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping to improve accuracy and detail of the discovered models.

Rules in BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping generate impact relationships based on discovered relationships. Higher level logical constructs (business services, organizations, user communities, and so on) and their relationships must be manually created.

BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping keeps the discovered CIs up-to-date. Rules in BMC CMDB can automatically relate infrastructure CIs to technical services.

Service models populated from the BMC CMDB to Infrastructure Management depend on the accuracy and completeness of the CI data in BMC CMDB. BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping must be used to populate BMC CMDB. BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping and the related reconciliation in BMC CMDB help ensure accuracy. Ensuring accuracy and preventing duplicates is more difficult when other mechanisms are used to populate the CI data into BMC CMDB.

For information about BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping, see the BMC Discovery online documentation.

If you do not use BMC Discovery and Dependency Mapping for service modeling, you must manually create all the infrastructure CIs and their relationships or import them into BMC CMDB using other tools. You must also manually keep the service model up-to-date. This approach is not recommended because of complications and potential data issues that may arise and must be addressed. This approach is also less efficient and more difficult to maintain.