Impact simulation

When a change manager receives a request for a change to a configuration item (CI), for example, to restart an email exchange server, the change manager must be able to quickly and accurately identify the impact of this change on the business service. In this case, it is the email service that runs on top of the physical network infrastructure.

Overview

BMC CMDB includes the Impact Simulator, which enables simulating a proposed change and then analyzing the simulated impact of that change on a business service. Change managers can use the results to determine if the change request affects critical upstream business services and accordingly decide approvers for the change request. Change managers can also use the Impact Simulator to generate simulation reports for audit or compliance purposes. 

The CMDB Impact Simulator is useful in planning for disaster recovery. You can run simulations to determine where the network is weakest, and plan accordingly. 

The following image shows an example of the impact simulation results in a table view:

The following image shows an example of the impact simulation results in a topology view:

You can search for a CI using the Impact Simulator and then simulate and assign and a weight to the impact. For example, the impact of the change could be a minor one; so the service may not be completely unavailable, or in an extreme situation, the service could be completely unavailable, thereby simulating a complete outage. Impact Simulator propagates the change right up to the top of the service model, which allows you to relate the CI to the change and see which services (IT or Business) could be impacted. Impact weights allow a change manager to quickly look at the proposed impact.

Save and compare simulations

You can save your simulations, allowing you to experiment with different kinds of impacts on the network and determine the nature of the affected services. You can compare these models and assign weights to your business services based on their relative importance. For example, you may have an email service and a payroll service being impacted at the very same time. Based on the weights, you can quickly determine which service must be restored first. If you created a simulation that you are satisfied with, you can create a change request related to this simulation so that you can get started with the tasks that are needed to facilitate this change.