Service Catalog options and option choices

Inside the Service Catalog, the primary purpose of configuring Option Choices is that the cloud administrator allows end users to modify the services they are requesting to meet their specifications. For example, you decide to set up three variations of the Apache server service offering with 0GB, 2GB or 4GB of additional disk space. By using Option Choices, you only need to specify one Service Offering and one Blueprint Deployment model (DM). You then configure three option choices — 0GB, 2GB, and 4GB.

As a result, when end users request a service for a new Apache server, their options are not constrained by the underlying service blueprint. Instead, they can modify the request to specify a Web NIC or additional disk capacity.

If you do not use Option Choices, you need to specify three Service Offerings and three Blueprint DMs — one each for each GB disk space. If you include a 1 CPU, 2 CPU, or 4 CPU configuration, the number of configurations then increases to nine. The immediate benefit for the cloud administrator is that Option Choices reduce the proliferation of service offerings and service blueprints that you need to configure in typical cloud environments.

In the Service Catalog, you can create options for service offerings (request definitions), requestable offerings (post-deploy actions), or any request. An option has one or more choices, each of which has cost and price information. These options and their choices are used when end users make a request in a request console, such as Service Request Management. They are managed separately from offerings because they do not rely on a specific offering. You can reuse options across offerings. You can use any number of options in an offering.

You can also group options into categories visible to end users. For example, a Hardware category might include options for CPU and memory.

Finally, you can set an icon to display the option when a user requests it in the Service Catalog request portal (under Service Instances).

Where to go from here

Configuring end-user Option Choices in service blueprints

Option Choices available when extending service blueprints

Related topics

Creating new services for the Service Catalog
Creating a service offering
Creating a requestable offering
Services