Analytics OnDemand deployment

When you subscribe to Analytics OnDemand, you receive access to both the BMC Analytics for Business Service Management (BMC Analytics for BSM) application and the BMC Dashboards for Business Service Management (BMC Dashboards for BSM) application. The following information provides examples that show how BMC Analytics for BSM and BMC Dashboards for BSM can be deployed.

Business value

Analytics OnDemand provides you with easy access to information from integrated cross-BSM reports and dashboard views, which help align services to their corresponding components.

BMC Analytics for BSM deployment

For information about the BMC Analytics for BSM architectural components, see Architecture.

The following diagram shows an example deployment of BMC Analytics for BSM:

Deployment model for BMC Analytics for BSM

Deployment components

This deployment example includes the following components:

• The user runs BMC Analytics for BSM from their browser.
• When the user submits HTML requests, they go through the reverse proxy for the BMC Remedy environment. This reverse proxy is a load balancer that routes inbound connections to the appropriate target web server.
• The two Apache Tomcat servers are hosted on two separate virtual machines (VMs) to assist with performance. BMC Remedy Mid Tier is installed on one Apache Tomcat web server while the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Professional application is installed on the other Tomcat server and has its own database.

• You can create your own reports on out-of-the-box ITSM universe. If you need to create any reports based on the customized objects, then a linked universe must to be created.

  Warning

  You must not make any changes in the out-of-the-box ITSM universe, but create a new linked universe with customized objects.

• Installed core universes and derived (or linked) universes, which you create to maintain your universe customizations, retrieve data from a BMC Remedy AR System.

Performance considerations

To ensure best performance, BMC Analytics for BSM requires a separate VM with 4 CPUs and 16 GB RAM.

The efficiency of the reports that you have created depends on how familiar your report developers are with SAP BusinessObjects, the universes, and database operations. When you create inefficient reports, you can cause an unwanted extra load on the BMC Remedy AR System server, database, and BMC Analytics for BSM VM.

If you are using one VM for both BMC Dashboards for BSM and BMC Analytics for BSM and you are experiencing the following CPU and memory usage, BMC splits the applications between two different VMs (one VM for each application):

• CPU exceeds 80 percent
• RAM exceeds 10 GB

Configuring BMC Analytics for BSM

To configure BMC Analytics for BSM for this deployment example, perform the following steps:

1. After installing BMC Analytics for BSM, configure the J2EE agent details.  For more information, see Configuring BMC Atrium Single Sign-On as an SP.
2. Configure the hypertext launch of BMC Change Management and BMC Service Desk: Incident Management reports from the BMC Remedy Mid Tier. For more information, see Configuring the hypertext launch to BMC Change Management and Configuring the hypertext launch to BMC Incident Management. After you have configured the hypertext launch to BMC Incident Management, you can add a hypertext link to an existing Incident Management report if a hypertext link does not already exist. For more information, see Adding a hypertext launch to an Incident Management report.

BMC Dashboards for BSM deployment

The following information shows an example deployment of BMC Dashboards for BSM.

The following image shows the architectural components for this example deployment.

Deployment architecture for BMC Dashboards for BSM

Deployment components

This deployment includes the following components:

• The user runs BMC Dashboards for BSM from their browser.
• When the user submits HTML requests, the requests go through the reverse proxy for the BMC Remedy environment. This reverse proxy is a load balancer that routes inbound connections to the appropriate target web server.

• This deployment includes a BMC Atrium Data Integration Layer (DIL), which is a Java application that contains a query engine, a library of views, a cache, and a metadata repository. The DIL includes an embedded MySQL database, which is used to cache data from BMC Remedy AR System. For on-premise deployment examples, different external databases could be used to cache the data. This caching database is not an exact replica of the BMC Remedy AR System database as BMC performs some aggregation of the data before storing the data required by the out-of-the-box pods in the cache tables. BMC also stores other metadata information in the caching database such as cache status, refresh cycles, and company filter data.
  The caching database is used only by the out-of-the-box pods, and it synchronizes the tables for the following applications using the following default cache refresh intervals:

  Application	Default cache interval
  BMC Service Desk: Incident Management	Synchronized every 15 minutes
  BMC Service Desk: Problem Management	Synchronized every 30 minutes
  BMC Change Management	Synchronized every 30 minutes
  BMC Asset Management	Synchronized every 60 minutes
  BMC Service Level Management	Synchronized every 30 minutes
  BMC Service Request Management	Synchronized every 30 minutes

  These intervals are configured by updating the following properties in the <BMCAtriumDILInstallationDirectory>\BMCDashboardsForBSM\DIL\CIS\conf\dil\dil.properties file:

  # Cache refresh rates in minutes (minimum allowed value is 5)
  cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Incident=15
  cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Problem=30
  cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Change=30
  cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Asset=60
  cacheRefreshRateMinutes.SLM=30
  cacheRefreshRateMinutes.SRM=30
  

• For information about system requirements for proper sizing and scalability, see the BMC Dashboards for Business Service Management Release Notes. Note that this example deployment does not use a clustered configuration.

The following image illustrates an example deployment of BMC Dashboards for BSM:

Deployment model for BMC Dashboards for BSM

Performance considerations

To ensure best performance, BMC Dashboards for BSM is installed on a VM with 4 CPUs and 8 GB RAM.

The BMC Atrium DIL is installed on a VM different from the VM used for BMC Analytics for BSM.

To increase performance, you can change the default cache refresh intervals in <BMCAtriumDILInstallationDirectory>\BMCDashboardsForBSM\DIL\CIS\conf\dil\dil.properties to the following values:

cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Incident=60
cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Problem=75
cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Change=75
cacheRefreshRateMinutes.Asset=10
5cacheRefreshRateMinutes.SLM=75
cacheRefreshRateMinutes.SRM=75

You can increase the heap size for the Apache Tomcat server and enable incremental garbage collection. For example, complete the following procedure:

1. Open a command prompt window and go to <installationDirectory>\BSM Dashboards\BSM Dashboards\tomcat\bin.
2. Enter the following command: tomcat7w //ES//BSMDASHBOARDSTOMCAT
   The BSM Dashboards Tomcat Properties dialog box opens.
3. Click the Java tab.
4. In the Java Options section, append -Xincgc to the existing options.
5. Set the Initial memory pool to 512.
6. Set the Maximum memory pool to 1024.
7. Click Apply.

You can also set the autodeploy attribute in the Server.xml file to false so that the Apache Tomcat server does not periodically check for or deploy new or updated web applications. To set the autodeploy attribute to false, perform the following steps:

1. Open <installationDirectory>\BSMDashboards\BSMDashboards\tomcat\conf\Server.xml using an editor.
2. Set the autoDeploy attribute to false:

<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps"
unpackWARs="true"  autoDeploy="false">

If you are using one VM for both the BMC Atrium DIL component and BMC Analytics for BSM and you are experiencing the following CPU and memory usage, BMC splits the applications between two different VMs, one for each application:

• CPU exceeds 80 percent.
• RAM exceeds 3 GB.

You can create your own pods, which access the BMC Remedy AR System production database directly instead of going though the BMC Atrium BMC Atrium DIL cached database. See the section "Architecture of BMC Dashboards for BSM" in the BMC Dashboards for Business Service Management Installation Guide for more information about the BMC Atrium DIL component. For every browser request, an SQL query is sent to the BMC Remedy AR System database. For example, if a view refresh interval is set on a custom pod for 1 minute then an SQL query from BMC Dashboards for BSM is sent every minute to the BMC Remedy AR System production database, which adds to its load.

Configuring BMC Dashboards for BSM

To configure BMC Dashboards for BSM for this deployment example, perform the following steps:

1. After installing BMC Dashboards for BSM, configure the J2EE agent details. For more information, see Configuring BMC Atrium Single Sign-On as an SP.
2. Configure the BMC Remedy AR System server data source:
   1. Log on to the BMC Dashboards for BSM Administrator Console.
   2. Click the Data Source Configuration icon.
   3. Select the BMC Remedy AR System Server data source.
   4. Provide the required connection information.
   5. Click Save.
3. Configure BMC Dashboards for BSM for cross launch by configuring the connection to BMC Remedy Mid Tier. The cross launch feature enables you to open BMC Remedy ITSM records directly from the BMC Dashboards for BSM reports. To configure the connection to the BMC Remedy Mid Tier for this example:
   1. Select the BMC Remedy Mid Tier Connection tab.
   2. Select the check box at the top of the tab to enable the options.
   3. Select the HTTPS transfer protocol.
   4. Select Prompt for login information to have the BMC Remedy Mid Tier prompt for user login information.
   5. Complete the following fields:
      • BMC Remedy Mid Tier Host Name — the host name for the BMC Remedy Mid Tier server that is configured to access the BMC Remedy AR System server that you specify in the BMC Remedy AR Server Host Name field in this same tab
      • Port — port number for the BMC Remedy Mid Tier (the default value is 8443 for HTTPS)
      • Context path — the location of the BMC Remedy Mid Tier in the JSP engine (the default value is arsys)
      • BMC Remedy AR Server Host Name — the host name of the BMC Remedy AR System server. By default, this field is blank.
   6. Click Save.
4. From the BMC Dashboards for BSM Administrator Console, add a BMC Single Sign-On user for this example:
   1. Click the User Management icon.
   2. In the User Management tool, click Add.
   3. On the Add page of the New Users wizard, search for the user that you want to add by entering the login ID. The user that matches the search criteria appears in the Available Users list.
   4. Select the user in the Available Users list and click Add to move the user to the Selected Users list.
   5. Click Continue.
   6. On the Assign Roles page, select the required roles (for example, Change Release Manager, Service Request Manager, and Service Desk Manager) by clicking one or more roles in the All Roles list and clicking Add to move them to the Assign Role to Selected Users list.
   7. Click Save.
5. Configure the required pods for this example:
   1. Access the Pod Configuration tool in the BMC Dashboards for BSM Administrator Console. For this example, ensure the following options are selected: BMC Pods Only and All Categories Selected.
   2. Select a category (for example, Incident Management) and a pod (for example, Incidents by Business Service) from the Pod Catalog.
      A pod preferences box dialog opens. If the pod is not configurable, text is provided to explain that. In that case, proceed to step 5e. below. If the pod is configurable, each pod contains different preferences, categorized by tabs. The tab labels remain red until the configuration is complete.
   3. Select the information on each tab that you want to display for the user in the user console; for example:
      • Services tab: Select the Email, Employee Services, and Online Retail Banking services and click Add.
      • Priority tab: Select the Critical, High, Medium, and Low priorities and click Add.
      • Status tab: Select all statuses from the left panel and click Add.
      • Grid Columns tab: Add Incident ID, Incident Summary, Impact, Urgency, and Assigned Group to the right panel, and select the User Default check box so that the items will appear by default for the user.
   4. Select the Make Available to Users check box to make this pod available in the Pod Catalog in the user console.
   5. Click Save.
   6. Click Preview.
   7. Select a time range from the drop-down list (for example, Last Quarter) so that data is graphically displayed for the pod.
6. Use the Dashboard Builder tool in the BMC Dashboards for BSM Administrator Console to create a dashboard for this example:
   1. Click the Dashboard Builder icon.
   2. Select User from the drop-down list and then select the user you created in step 4 from the second drop-down list.
   3. In the Dashboard Manager, click New Dashboard.
   4. In the Create Dashboard dialog box, complete the following information:
      • Enter the dashboard Name.
      • Enter a Description (optional).
   5. Click Layouts.
   6. Select a column layout and click OK. The Pod Catalog opens.
   7. Drag the pods you configured in step 5 from the Pod Catalog to the appropriate columns.
   8. Click Close to save the dashboard. The dashboard appears in the user console the next time the user logs on.

Related topics

Installing BMC Analytics for BSM
Configuring BMC Analytics for BSM after installation
Using BMC Analytics for BSM
Installing and configuring BMC Dashboards for BSM