Life cycle and status of entities and domains

The current life cycle state of an entity or domain is identified by a status, which can change during the life cycle of the entity or domain to reflect changes in its usage or activity. An entity is deleted automatically when all of its data is aged out. You can also explicitly cause all dismissed entities to be deleted by emptying the Dismissed entities folder.

The following table lists the possible status:

Status	Description	Console representation
AUTO	The entity is new; it has just been automatically imported by an ETL task and has not been associated with a domain yet.	Newly discovered folder
ACTIVE	The entity is a child of one or more domains.	All domains folder
INACTIVE	The entity is not associated with a domain but data may still be collected.	Unassigned folder. The entity may be made invisible. For more information, see INACTIVE.
DISMISSED	The entity is not associated with a domain and new data may not be collected anymore. Existing data may still be viewed and analyzed until it is aged out.	Dismissed folder

Example life cycle of a system

A system from which you just started collecting data is imported into BMC Helix Capacity Optimization (status: AUTO).
The system is assigned to a specific domain (status: ACTIVE).
After some months, the system is removed from the domain because it is not used anymore, though it may be used again in the future (status: INACTIVE).
After some time, you stop collecting data from the system altogether, because it is no longer relevant (status: DISMISSED).

AUTO - Newly discovered systems and business drivers

Data is imported into BMC Helix Capacity Optimization by Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tasks using external monitoring tools as sources of information. In most cases, ETL tasks can detect if monitoring instruments are collecting data for new systems or business drivers and create new entities automatically. These newly created entities are placed in the Newly discovered folder. They are not yet children of any domain and are in the AUTO status.

ACTIVE - Currently used systems and business drivers

A system or business driver is said to be ACTIVE when it is a child of one or more domains under the All domains folder. An AUTO entity can become ACTIVE in the following ways:

A hierarchy rule automatically makes it a child of a domain because a connector asserts a parent-child relationship.
You manually import the entity into a domain.

A system can be associated with two or more domains under the following conditions:

The two domains represent a different logical view of systems. For example, one groups systems by operating system, the other by datacenter location.
The system is shared by the domains, that is, its resources are consumed partially by one domain, partially by other domains. For example, for business services, set the system's status to ACTIVE_SHARED.

A business driver can be associated with two or more domains under the following conditions:

The two domains represent a different logical view of business drivers.
The business driver is common to the different domains, that is, the domains are affected by the same load. For example, the Customer Base business driver affects all business services. In such situations, set the business driver status to ACTIVE_COMMON.

Note

There is an important conceptual difference between shared entities (systems) and common entities (business drivers):

You should assign the ACTIVE_SHARED status to a system when the domains (or services) sharing it use part of the system's resources.
You should assign the ACTIVE_COMMON status to a business driver when it consumes the resources of all the domains (or services) that have the business driver in common.

For more information about hierarchies, see Hierarchies.

INACTIVE - Unassigned systems and business drivers

A system or business driver is said to be INACTIVE when it is not currently a child of any domain, but its metrics can still be collected. An ACTIVE entity can become INACTIVE in the following ways:

The hierarchy manager no longer finds any relationship between the entity and any domain under All domains.This happens because the connector that regularly asserts a relationship between that entity and a domain is no longer asserting it, presumably because the data source no longer contains data about the entity.
You manually break the relationship between the entity and its parent.

When an ACTIVE entity becomes INACTIVE, BMC Helix Capacity Optimization automatically places it in the Unassigned folder.

If an entity becomes INACTIVE because of a temporary gap in data at the data source, then as soon as the connector finds data on it again, the relationship is reasserted, and the hierarchy manager places the entity back under a domain, making the entity ACTIVE again. BMC Helix Capacity Optimization will no longer show this entity under the Unassigned folder.

Similarly, if you manually import the entity under a domain, then the entity is moved from the Unassigned folder back into the hierarchy under All domains, making it ACTIVE again.

Tip

If systems are being deleted in your environment, you can expect the Unassigned folder to grow because connectors no longer find these systems and they are marked INACTIVE. This is common in a virtualized environment where virtual machines are deleted on a regular basis.

Otherwise, an INACTIVE entity remains in the Unassigned folder until it is deleted.