This documentation supports releases of BMC Helix Continuous Optimization up to December 31, 2021. To view the latest version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Business Services view

Use the Business Services view to get a consolidated summary of the business services in your infrastructure. You can use this summary to understand the overall health and status of the business services. You can drill down into specific business services and view the associated applications, service pools (for cloud and on-premises), or deployment (for Kubernetes) details. You can also analyze the capacity at the service pool or deployment level. For details on business services, applications, service pools, and deployments, see Business services, applications, and service pools

Using the Business Services view, you can achieve the following goals: 

  • Obtain an at-a-glance view of the health of all business services.
  • Identify the business services that are at risk of saturation or already saturated.
  • View and compare business services according to their resource utilization. 
  • Drill down into specific business services and view associated applications and service pools or deployment details.
  • Drill down into a service pool and associated servers for details.
  • Drill down into a Kubernetes deployment and associated pods for details.

Supported technologies and entities

In the context of the business service and service pool, a server means a virtual machine of any of the supported technologies, or a standalone system. In the rest of the documentation of this feature, it is referred to as server.

For this feature, only servers of the following technologies are supported: VMware, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Hyper-V, KVM, Xenserver, Standalone systems. The Kubernetes pods are also supported. Other entities, such as storage and network are not supported.

The connectors for these technologies connects with data sources and collect data. For information about the data sources for each of the supported supported technologies, see Data source requirements for the Business Services view.

The connector may assign a specific type to a system. If not assigned, the system type defaults to Generic. For information about system types, see System types.

  • Generic
  • Virtual Machine
  • Virtual Machine - VMware
  • Virtual Machine - Solaris Zone
  • Virtual Machine - AIX LPAR
  • Virtual Machine - Xen
  • Virtual Machine - Hyper-V
  • Virtual Machine - HP Integrity
  • Virtual Machine - Solaris LDOM
  • Workload Partition - AIX WPAR
  • Virtual Machine - Solaris Dynamic System Domain
  • Virtual Machine - AIX Shared Processor LPAR
  • Virtual Machine - KVM
  • HP nPartition
  • HP vPartition
  • Virtual Machine - AIX VIO LPAR
  • Virtual Machine - AWS
  • Virtual Machine - Azure
  • Virtual Machine - Google Cloud
  • Virtual Machine - IBM Cloud
  • Kubernetes - Pod Workload

BMC Helix Continuous Optimization produces indicators on Risk, Usage, and Days to saturation for each service pool or deployment that you have defined based on the indicator values of contained servers or pods respectively. For each business service or application, the indicators values are calculated based on the indicator values of contained service pools or deployments. The last 30 days of data is considered to calculate the indicator values. For details, see Indicators used in the Business Services view.

Prerequisites

Ensure that the administrator has completed the following tasks:

Optionally, the administrator can configure the long term historical data if you want to extend the forecasted saturation data from 90 days (default) to 180 days. 

If you are new to capacity views, see Accessing and using capacity views.

To analyze business services

  1. Access the Business Service view.

    In the navigation pane of the Views tab, select Views > Business Services

    The Business Service Overview page is displayed and lists all the business services. 
    You can choose to view the business services for a specific domain or tag by using the corresponding filters. For more information about domain and tag filters, see Using filtering options in the Views.
    The Apply Domain Filter list displays only domains and their subdomains that are configured in the Settings page. 

  2. Review and analyze the overview panel and charts on the page.

    1 Overview panel

    Displays the following details for business services:

    • Total number of business services for which forecasted saturation data is available. 
    • Forecasted saturation for business services:
      • Now - Business services that are already saturated, that is, the resource usage has already exceeded thresholds. 
      • 1 to 30 days - Business services that have reached capacity shortfall, and will be saturating anytime between 1 to 30 days.
      • 31 to 60 days - Business services that will soon be experiencing capacity shortfall, and saturating anytime between 31 to 60 days.
      • 61 to 90 days - Business services that will be saturating anytime between 61 to 90 days.
      • No saturation - Business services that are healthy from the capacity management perspective, and are not at risk of saturation.

    On clicking a number or category, you can drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that category.

    2 Saturation by Service Category bubble chart

    Provides an at-a-glance summary of the saturation by business services category and days to saturation. After you identify a problem, you can drill down into details, analyze it further, and take necessary actions.
    This chart displays the category based on the service category tag type and respective tags configured in the Settings page. For example, if you have selected Importance as a tag type and High, Medium, Low as tags, the chart displays data based on these tags.

    Key characteristics:

    • The position, color, and size of bubbles indicate saturation risk severity, saturation status, and a number of business services affected. At a glance, you can identify situations on the bubble chart that may require immediate attention and prioritize remediation actions accordingly. 
    • The color of each bubble corresponds to a saturation status: green for healthy business services, yellow and orange for business services that are approaching saturation, and red for saturated business services.
    • The size of each bubble indicates how many business services are affected; the bigger the circle, the more business services are affected.  
    • On clicking a bubble, you can drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that bubble.
    • Using these visual cues, you can scan the chart to identify problems. For example, large red bubbles high on the Y axis might mean trouble. Red indicates the business service has saturated. Large bubbles mean more business services are affected. Higher on the Y axis means the business service is more important.

    * In this chart, only business services for which forecasted saturation data is available, are displayed.

    Forecasted saturation up to 180 days

    The Overview panel and the Saturation by Service Category chart display the 90 days of the forecasted saturation data, by default. The administrator can enable the display of 180 days of the forecasted saturation data by modifying the Use long term data to compute indicators parameter in the Optimizer thresholds page. For more information, see Configuring and managing thresholds for metrics and indicators.

    4. Usage histogram

    Displays the level of usage for business services, so that you can track which service pools have consumed the excess capacity.

    Key characteristics: 

    • Business services are grouped and displayed as vertical bars based on their resources utilization.
    • On clicking a bar, you can drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that bar.

    * In this chart, only business services for which usage data is available, are displayed.

    5. Risk pie chart

    Displays the level of risk for business services to compare the healthy, in warning state, and saturated business services. It provides an indication that CPU, memory, or disk is either already saturated or will soon be experiencing capacity contention.

    Whether the business service is in HealthyWarning, or Saturated state is decided based on the threshold that you set in the Settings page.

    Key characteristics: 

    • The color of each slice of the pie corresponds to a risk status of business services: green for healthy, orange for medium risk, and red for high risk business services.
    • On a slice of the chart, you can view details of the specific category.
    • On clicking a slice, you can drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that category.
    • On clicking a category name in the legend, you can choose to remove the business services details for that category.

    * In this chart, only business services for which risk data is available, are displayed.

    For information about the indicators displayed in the Business Service Overview view, see Indicators used in the Business Services view.

  3. View the business services and associated applications and service pools


    Applied filters
    : The business services data in the summary table is displayed based on the applied filters. For example, if the selected bubble has ten saturated business services, data for those business services is displayed. You can clear the applied filters to view data for all business services.

    To show or hide columns, select the action menu  > Show/Hide columns that is located next to the table name. By default, some of the columns of the table are hidden.

    Column

    Description

    NameName of the business service that uses the resources of the public cloud provider or on-premises infrastructure. If this business service has applications associated with it, they are displayed as separate rows under the business service. Click the expander to view the application details such as name, usage, risk, and days to saturation values.
    ImportanceImportance of this business service relative to other business services. The values are High, Medium, and Low.
    ApplicationNumber of applications in a business service. When you expand the business service name, the name of the application is displayed.
    UsageIndicates the usage value for the business service. If this business service has applications associated with it, the usage value for application is also displayed.
    RiskIndicates the risk value for the business service. If this business service has applications associated with it, the risk value for application is also displayed.
    Pools Usage1

    Indicates the usage value for the pools related to this application or business service along with the severity status. A pool can be a deployment (for Kubernetes) or a service pool (for cloud and on-premises). Each pool is displayed as a color-coded box. On hovering your mouse over a box, you can view the name and usage value of the specific pool.

    On clicking a box, you can drill down into that pool and view its details.

    The legends for colors depicting the usage severity are displayed below the summary table.

    Pools Risk1

    Indicates the risk percentage value for the pools related to this application or business service along with the severity status. A pool can be a deployment (for Kubernetes) or a service pool (for cloud and on-premises). Each pool is displayed as a color-coded triangle. On hovering your mouse over a triangle, you can view the name and risk value of the specific pool.

    On clicking a triangle, you can drill down into that pool and view its details.

    The legends for colors depicting the risk severity are displayed below the summary table.

    Days to Saturation

    Projected amount of time before the business service or application runs out of available capacity.

    • It displays a number of days to saturation for the business service or application.
    • If the days to saturation value is 91 days or beyond, this field displays No saturation.
    • If the business service or application is already saturated, it displays Saturated.
    Bottleneck Resources

    Name of the resource that has either saturated or will saturate in the next 30 days. Bottleneck resource can be CPU, MEMORY or STORAGE. The field is blank if none of the resources has saturated, or will saturate.

    The usage and risk severity values are decided based on the threshold that you set using the Thresholds for service pool option in the Settings page. 

    For information about the indicators displayed in the Business Services view, see Indicators used in the Business Services view.

  4. Drill down into a service pool or deployment for details

    Depending on whether your pool is a service pool or deployment, select a tab and view the details:

    To analyze the capacity at the service pool level

    1. In the Business Services page, click the service pool box for which you want to view details for.
    2. The Service Pool Details page opens that provides the general details for the selected service pool:
      • Name of the service pool.
      • System type of the service pool. Example: Service Pool.
      • Related information to this service pool such as a list of servers contained in the service pool. 
      • Tags that are associated with that service pool.
    3. The Summary tab is selected by default. Review the performance details for the selected service pool.

      Using the Summary tab, you can:

      • View the Usage and Risk indicators in bar charts.
        Each indicator bar chart shows the overall indicator value (Usage or Risk) of the service pool, calculated by combining the different resources of that service pool.
        For example, the Usage indicator for a VMware system indicates the overall usage of the service pool, calculated by combining the usage of CPU, Memory, and Storage resources of the service pool.
        For information about the indicators displayed in the Service Pool Details page, see Indicators used in the Business Services view.
      • View utilization charts for essential metrics such as CPU, Memory, and Storage on a detailed, hourly or daily basis. When you hover your mouse over data points in the charts, values for those data points are displayed in the data tips. 

        You can save the charts as image files, download chart data, annotate and print charts. For more information, see Managing charts.

    4. To know details of the configuration metrics of the selected service pool, click the Configuration Details tab.

      The following table is an example of configuration data that is displayed for a selected service pool.

      Resource Value Description
      CPU
      Number of CPU cores Number

      The number of CPU cores per service pool.

      Memory
      Real memory in GB

      The physical memory allocated to resources in a service pool.

      Storage
      Total size of all Filesystems in TB

      Total size of the file system.

    5. To know details of all servers that are contained in the service pool, click the Servers tab.

      Using the Servers tab, you can:

      • View all servers in the service pool with their corresponding values for the Usage and Risk indicators. Each indicator further displays resources, for example, CPU, Memory, Storage, that are taken into account to calculate that indicator value.
      • View tooltips for each indicator. When you hover over each individual resource bar (CPU, Memory, or Storage), a tooltip displays the score of the underlying server, in percentage, with brief reasoning of the score. This information can help you quickly identify any problem area and determine any remedial action that might be required.
      • Click the name of the server to view the technology details of the server. For example, if you click a VMware server, the VM details page for the vSphere Virtual Machines view is displayed for the selected server. 

    6. For information about the indicators displayed in the Service Pool Details page, see Indicators used in the Business Services view

    7. To go back to the Business Services page, click at the top left of the Service Pool Details page.

    To analyze the capacity at the deployment level

    1. In the Business Services page, click the deployment box for which you want to view details for.
      The Deployment Details page opens that provides the general details for the selected deployment such as deployment name and type. The type is Kubernetes - Controller.
    2. The Summary tab is selected by default. Review the performance details for the selected deployment.

      Using the Summary tab, you can:

      • View the Usage and Risk indicators in bar charts.
        Each indicator bar chart shows the overall indicator value (Usage or Risk) of the deployment, calculated by combining the different resources of that deployment, in terms of CPU and Memory.
        For information about the indicators displayed in the Deployment Details page, see Indicators used in the Business Services view.
      • View utilization charts for essential metrics such as CPU and Memory on a detailed, hourly or daily basis. When you hover your mouse over data points in the charts, values for those data points are displayed in the data tips. 

        You can save the charts as image files, download chart data, annotate and print charts. For more information, see Managing charts.

    3. To know details of all pods in the selected deployment, click the Pods tab.
      Using the Pods tab, you can:

      • View all pods in the deployment with their corresponding values for the Usage and Risk indicators. Each indicator further displays resources, for example, CPU, Memory that are taken into account to calculate that indicator value.
      • View tooltips for each indicator. When you hover over each individual resource bar (CPU or Memory), a tooltip displays the score of the underlying pod, in percentage, with brief reasoning of the score. This information can help you quickly identify any problem area and determine any remedial action that might be required.
      • Click the name of the pod to view the details of the pod. The Pod Details page in the Kubernetes view is displayed for the selected pod. 

    4. To go back to the Business Services page, click at the top left of the Deployment Details page.

  5. To save an offline copy of the details on the currently active page, click  and select Export to PDF or Export to Excel

How to videos

Information

These videos describe the functionality of TrueSight Capacity Optimization, but they are valid for BMC Helix Continuous Optimization too.

Introduction to the Business Service View (5:03)

https://youtu.be/yWv4hH2-dHg 

Navigating Business Service View (5:06)

https://youtu.be/5IsYXMeTZqY

Leveraging Service Pools (5:34)

https://youtu.be/-ZuV2ydVWxA

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