Multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server management

This topic discusses BMC recommendations to be followed when creating discrete and distributed service models and details about how to set up a model for optimal performance. This topic also provides guidelines on how events must be managed in a multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server environment, so as to gain maximum business value without impacting performance.

Using the recommendations in this topic, you can create a service model in a way that presents a correct picture of your business services and also presents an accurate estimate of optimal performance.

For details about discrete and distributed service models, see Centralized Service Model.

For reasons of scalability or modularity, there is a need to distribute different configuration items (CIs) of a service model across various BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers. However, at the same time, operators must be allowed to view the complete service model and its status from a single view (called the central view).

Recommended hardware and software configurations

To create discrete and distributed service models, BMC recommends the same hardware and software configuration as that required by the Central Server and Child Server. For information about the configuration, see  Installation requirements

Centralized service models

You can create two types of service models:

• Discrete service model
• Distributed service model

Discrete service model

A service model that is present entirely on a single BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server is referred to as a discrete service model. BMC recommends that you deploy discrete service models for optimized performance and scalability. The number of CIs in a discrete service model is limited to the maximum number of CIs supported by Infrastructure Management version 9.5. If the number of CIs in a service model is within the limit of a single-server, then the service model must be present on a single BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server.

Distributed service model

A service model that is distributed across two or more BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers is referred to as a distributed service model. When the number of CIs in a service model exceeds the maximum limit of CIs allowed for a single BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server, then you can distribute the service model across multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers.

When creating a distributed service model, ensure that the relationships do not criss-cross frequently across multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers (cells). Otherwise, the service model might deteriorate the performance of impact computation. For optimal performance of the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server, a distributed service model must cross the boundaries of impact management (BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server Cell) minimally (ideally, only once or twice).

Example of a Distributed Service Model:

   Central Server --No Cis

   Child Server1 – vm-w28-rds829 – 4 Cis for Distributed Service model

-          Banking_Service_SSI1

-          Online_Banking_SSI1

-          Online_Server_SSI1

-          Customer_DB_SSI1

   Child Server2 – vw-pun-sms-qa05 – 2 Cis for Distributed Service model

-          Phone_Banking_SSI2

-          IVR_System_SSI2

CI class definitions

It is mandatory that the metadata of the cell be consistent across all the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers. If you are using BMC Atrium CMDB, you can export the class definitions from BMC Atrium CMDB, using the pclassinfo CLI command. Place the BAROC file that contains the class definitions at installationDirectory/pw/server/etc/cellName/kb/classes.

For example, - pclassinfo -x -o mc_sm_object.baroc

For more information about pclassinfo, see pclassinfo.

If the metadata of the cell is not the same across all BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers, it might result in undetermined behavior in the Infrastructure Management UI. For example, not all classes may be populated in the search drop-down list, icons may not be displayed for the various CIs, and so on.

Configuring CIs

BMC recommends adhering to the following guidelines when configuring the CI settings:

• When creating a distributed service model, the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers on which the model is to be distributed must contain the cell details of one another in their respective installationDirectory/pw/server/etc/mcell.dir files.

• Select the settings for the cell alias as shown in the figure below. The CI and its providers must be published to the cell whose alias has been selected in the Impact Model Designer.
  
  

• When creating a service model using Impact Model Designer, in the Edit Component Properties dialog box, Publish to Infrastructure Management Performance Manager area, ensure that you select the Yes and Propagate option for the cell of the top-level CI. Also, set Enterprise=T in the pserver.conf file in BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server. These two settings are mandatory to set up discrete or distributed service models.

For detailed information about these settings, see Creating service configuration items in BMC Impact Model Designer.

Recommended setup

This section contains BMC recommendations for setting up the environment to create discrete and distributed service models.

• No CIs on the Central Server
  In a multiple server setup that contains one Central Server and one or more Child Servers, the Central Server must not host any service model.
  BMC does not recommend having an CIs locally on the Central Server. The Central Server has additional responsibilities compared to the Child Server. Therefore, addition of CIs and their monitoring data on the Central Server multiplies the load on that server, thus deteriorating its performance.

• No event propagation from the Child Server to the Central Server
  Do not propagate events from the Child Server to the Central Server. You can monitor remote CIs or service models from the Central Server. To perform any event related operation, cross-launch to the Child Server and perform the operation on that Child Server.

• Monitor to CI mapping
  Map the CI to the appropriate monitors for association of alarms or abnormalities with the CI. You can do the mapping manually or use the administration console to do the mapping.

• Event association with CIs
  • If the BMC PATROL Agent or Adapter is collecting data for the CIs, it must send data to the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server to which the CI is published. This ensures that that the alarms or abnormalities that are generated are associated with the appropriate CIs (assuming that the monitor to CI mapping has been made).
  • In scenarios where third party event sources are sending events directly to the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server Cell, the event sources must point to the appropriate BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server Cell in which the CIs are created.

• Do not duplicate CIs across service models
  Do not duplicate CIs across multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers. CIs that are common to service models residing on different servers, must be shared among the various servers.
  BMC does not recommend the creation of duplicate CIs. If a CI is involved in more than one service model across multiple BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers, then BMC recommends that you create a distributed service model rather than creating duplicate CIs.
  For example, in the figure below, the Distributed_Database CI is a CI that is a provider to two CIs that reside on different BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers. The Distributed_Database CI is shared between two Child Servers instead of creating a duplicate of the Distributed_Database CI.
  
  As far as possible, service models that share a CI must reside together on a single BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server. If the service models are shared across different BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers, BMC recommends creating a distributed service model instead of creating duplicate CIs across BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers.