Service schedules

Service schedules are a combination of a defined schedule with a specific service model component that indicates when the component must meet availability or performance goals. Each component is assigned a service schedule (but it can be a schedule shared with other components) which is as follows:

• Periods when a CI is in high demand, or when it must meet its availability and performance goals, are called During Schedule (during high-demand time frames).
• Periods when a CI is in low demand, or when the component's availability and performance are less important, are called Off Schedule (during low demand time frames). Also, any undefined time is considered Off Schedule.
• Periods within During Schedule in which a component is considered to be Off Schedule are called Exceptions Within During Schedule.

Component attributes such as cost or base priority might have different values depending on whether the component is in high demand (a During Schedule period) or in low demand (an Off Schedule period). These priority changes are discussed in more detail in the Dynamic prioritization section.

Service schedules example with exceptions

Consider a component that is expected to meet its performance goals from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. each day. This period is considered During Schedule. The same component, if not needed from 5 P.M. to 8 A.M. each day, is considered Off Schedule during that time.

Within the During Schedule period, if the component is scheduled to be taken offline every day from noon to 1 P.M., instead of creating two different During Schedule time frames (one for 8 A.M. to noon, and another from 1 P.M. to 5 P.M.), you could create an Exceptions Within During Schedule time frame.

Timeframes of a service model

Service schedules are built of timeframes. Timeframes are blocks of time that specify the times that are During Schedule or Exceptions Within During Schedule. Two types of timeframes exist:

• Global timeframes are created in the BMC Impact Model Designer, stored in the BMC Atrium CMDB and are available to all cells within an environment. You can create global timeframes and use them in both BMC Impact Model Designer and Infrastructure Management.
• Local timeframes are stored in a single cell and are only available to the event management policies within that cell. You can create local timeframes and use them only in the Infrastructure Management schedules editor.

The following table illustrates the differences between global timeframes and local timeframes: 

 Global and Local timeframe differences