Perform change impact analysis prior to executing changes
Before you begin
Make sure you are familiar with creating smart groups based on business service(s). For information about how to do this, see Group-servers-by-business-service.
Example scenarios: analyzing the impact of proposed tasks
An IT administrator might want to see what parts of the company will be affected by planned server automation tasks, such as running Patching Jobs. For example, if this time of the year is critical for Human Resources, the IT administrator might want to make sure the Human Resources servers are scheduled for patching at a different time.
There are several ways to perform this type of change impact analysis. Here are some examples for the patching scenario described above:
- Create a smart group for the operating system environment you want to patch. For example, you might create a smart group called "Patch Win2K3 x86" and your smart group condition might be: After you have created this smart group, you can browse each server in the group, examining each server's BUSINESS_SERVICES property to see the parts of the company that will be affected by your proposed Patching Job.
- Create a smart group that contains Human Resources servers that will be affected by your proposed patching activity. For example, you might create a smart group called "HR servers at Win2K3 x86" and your two smart group conditions might be: You can look at all the servers in this smart group and know exactly which HR servers would be impacted by your proposed Patching Jobs.
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