Publishing Server architecture

The Publishing Server is an application that publishes a service model to the cell. The publishing server performs the following functions:

• Triggers an automated publication of Infrastructure Management data from the BMC Atrium CMDB to cells when any reconciliation job terminates on BMC Atrium CMDB
• Publishes the BMC Atrium CMDB asset service model data to cells on demand
• Publishes data from a BAROC source file to cells on demand
• Exports the class definitions on demand to BAROC files that are ready for distribution to the cells

Publishing Server architecture 

The Publishing Server receives notification from BMC Atrium CMDB about changes to service model objects, such as by BMC Impact Model Designer. The publishing server retrieves the data from BMC Atrium CMDB and publishes the components to the cell. Through the administration console, you retrieve components from the cell, or you create and send components to the cell. You monitor components in the operator console. 

The following figure shows the high-level components involved in creating, publishing, and monitoring service model objects.

Publishing Server architecture

The following components are also part of the publishing server environment, and are not shown in the figure:

• Notification Engine on BMC Atrium CMDB. The Publishing Server uses the Notification Engine to retrieve changed component data. Notification Engine sends a notification to Publishing Server on termination of a recon job run, after which Publishing Server starts a publication.
• Service Model Manager (smmgr) on the cell, which is a service that is started by the cell to assist in publishing.
• Notifications from the cell to the JServer service model cache and Administration Console synchronize the Operations Console and Administration Console with the cell.

Sources for service model objects

BMC Atrium CMDB source for service model objects

When service model component and relationship data is stored in BMC Atrium CMDB, you use these products to create and manage service models:

• BMC Impact Model Designer
• Publishing Server

This is called the publish feed, or AtriumPublish, method of creating and publishing service model objects.

The BMC Impact Model Designer provides a graphical user interface to build and maintain a service model with component objects, and manage your service model environment. In the Publishing Server, you publish service model data to the cells and manage publishing environments and filters. Your service model objects can come solely from BMC Atrium CMDB or you can add objects to it from other sources.

For more information about creating service models by using BMC Impact Model Designer, see BMC Impact Model Designer user interface.

Non-Atrium CMDB sources for service model objects  

There are several methods you can use to create and publish service model objects without using BMC Atrium CMDB. Non-Atrium methods are any application, executable, script, or rule that sends service model data directly to the cell.

Direct publish API

The direct publish application programming interface uses the Publishing Server. You can create a BAROC source file of object data and send it to the cell by using the pposter CLI, which publishes the data to the cell by using the publishing server. This method is useful if you have a third-party repository that contains your service model. You can extract your model into BAROC format and use the publishing server to feed your model to one or more cells.

Direct feed API

By using the direct feed application programming interface, you can create a BAROC source file of object data and send it to the cell by using the mposter CLI. Sending service model data to the cell from administration console, the CLI command mposter, or MRL rules is enabled by default. Because direct feed is enabled by default, when a cell starts, the service management data is loaded.