Supporting BMC Atrium Service Context

BMC Atrium Service Context enables you to easily view critical information about a business service and its performance. This information, such as related incidents, changes, and configuration items, is displayed in a summarized format that employees across your organization can access.

The Service Context Summary window in BMC Atrium Explorer enables you to view the key attributes of a service. These attributes are extracted, collected, and compiled from compatible BMC applications running in your environment, including BMC Server Automation. For more information about compatible BMC applications, see the BMC Solution and Product Availability and Compatibility Utility.

You decide the kinds of attributes that you want to display in the Service Context Summary window for the service, application, and server Configuration Items (CIs) that are related to a business service. Some attributes, such as Name and Description, appear in the top portion of the Service Context Summary window as header data. Other attributes appear in the lower portion of the window, with one or more results for which users can view details. The attributes supplied by BMC Server Automation are Deployed Changes and Detected Changes. These attributes are only applicable to server CIs related to the business service. After you enable these attributes in the Service Context Administration window, they appear in the lower portion of the Service Context Summary window, and users can click the results to see more details.

For a complete list of attributes and their source applications, and for information on enabling BMC Atrium Service Context to display these attributes, see Configuring attributes in the Service Context Administration window in the BMC Atrium Core documentation.

The following table lists the attributes supplied by BMC Server Automation, and shows the details that users can see about each attribute:

where:

• Datatype - type of data displayed in the attribute. Possible values are Text, Icon, or List. A List attribute contains a concatenated value from two or more values from the source application.
• CI Type - The BMC Atrium CMDB CDM CI classes with which an attribute is associated.
• List attribute details - The names of two or more attributes that make up an attribute of the List datatype.

The following BMC Server Automation job types and the corresponding change types are considered for Deployed Changes:

Only the Snapshot Job is considered for Detected Changes. 

The following sections provide information about setting up and configuring BMC Server Automation for BMC Atrium Service Context:

• Setting up BMC Server Automation for BMC Atrium Service Context
• Specifying BMC Server Automation information for BMC Atrium Service Context
• Configuring BMC Server Automation web services for BMC Atrium Service Context
• Configuration changes for BMC Atrium Service Context
• Additional requirements for BMC Atrium Service Context
• Accessing BMC Atrium Service Context from BMC Server Automation Console

Setting up BMC Server Automation for BMC Atrium Service Context

• BMC BladeLogic Atrium Integration must be enabled. See BMC BladeLogic Atrium Integration Implementation Guide.
• You must have transferred business service information from BMC Atrium CMDB to the BMC BladeLogic database using the Atrium Import Job.
• You must configure the BladeLogic web services using the blasadmin utility. See Configuring BladeLogic web services for BMC Atrium Service Context.
• In BMC Atrium CMDB, specify information pertaining to BMC Server Automation in the CMDB.SC:ServiceContextAuthenticationInfo form. See Specifying BMC Server Automation details for BMC Atrium Service Context.
• In BMC Atrium CMDB, set the default web path to the BMC Remedy Mid Tier URL using the Advanced tab in Server Info.
• Make the required configuration changes in the CMDB.SC:ServiceContextAuthenticationInfo form. See Configuration changes for BMC Atrium Service Context.

Specifying BMC Server Automation information for BMC Atrium Service Context

1. Click the Configure button on the Advanced Settings tab in the Service Context Administration window to access the CMDB.SC:ServiceContextAuthenticationInfo form.
2. Set the Application Name field to BMC_BladeLogic_Server_Automation_Suite.

3. Set the User Namefield to the BMC Server Automation user name relevant for BMC Atrium Service Context.

   The associated RBAC role for this user must have BLAdmins or equivalent authorizations.

4. Specify the password associated with the BMC Server Automation user.
5. Set the Authentication String field to the name of the RBAC role applicable for the specified BMC Server Automation user.

Configuring BMC Server Automation web services for BMC Atrium Service Context

1. On the BMC Server Automation Application Server command line, run the following command to start the Application Server Administration console:

   blasadmin -a

2. From the blasadmin prompt, run the following command to enable web services:

   set appServer enableWebServices true

3. From the blasadmin prompt, run the following command to set the Registry Server to the host name or the IP address of the computer on which the BMC Atrium UDDI server is hosted:

   set WebServices RegistryServer vm-test1

4. From the blasadmin prompt, run the following command to set the Registry Server port to the UDDI port of the BMC Atrium UDDI server:

   set WebServices RegistryServerPort 8080

5. From the blasadmin prompt, run the following command to set the Registry Server username to the username for the BMC Atrium UDDI server:

   set WebServices RegistryServerUserName admin

6. From the blasadmin prompt, run the following command to set the Registry Server password to the password corresponding to the username for the BMC Atrium UDDI server:

   set WebServices RegistryServerPassword sa
7. Restart the BladeLogic Application Server.
8. (optional) To verify that BMC Server Automation web services for the BMC Atrium Service Context are configured properly, see Testing connectivity with BMC Atrium Service Context providers in the BMC Atrium Core documentation.
9. If your environment has multiple Application Servers, repeat Step 1 to Step 8 for each Application Server.

Configuration changes for BMC Atrium Service Context

1. Verify that you have specified BMC Server Automation information for BMC Atrium Service Context. For more information, see Specifying BMC Server Automation information for BMC Atrium Service Context.
2. On the computer hosting the BladeLogic Application Server, run the createServiceContextArtifacts.nsh script from the BMC BladeLogic Server Automation installation folder\NSH\Scripts.
    This script creates all the artifacts required for Service Context in BMC BladeLogic. This script also sets the USE_FOR_SERVICE_CONTEXT property to true for all the Service Context Snapshot Jobs that it creates.
3. If you want to enable an existing Snapshot Job for BMC Atrium Service Context, you must set the USE_FOR_SERVICE_CONTEXT property to true.

Additional requirements for BMC Atrium Service Context

• You must enable the BladeLogic Server Automation attributes to appear in the Service Context Summary window. For more information, see Configuring attributes in the Service Context Administration window in the BMC Atrium Core documentation.
• Users must have the correct permissions to view CI information in BMC Atrium Service Context. Specifically, users must be members of the CMDB SC User Group group. They must also have view permissions for the business service CI from which they launch the Service Context Summary window. Users can also see summary information about CIs that are related to the business service, but they must have view permissions for each related CI to see details about those CIs. For more information, see Working with BMC Atrium Service Context in the BMC Atrium Core documentation.
• If you want to access the Service Context View (launched from within the BMC Server Automation Console),  you would need the credentials of an BMC Remedy AR system or BMC Atrium CMDB user, who is part of the CMDB SC User Group.
• For launching BMC Atrium Service Context from the BMC Server Automation Console, the role associated with the BMC Server Automation user must have at least the "Server.Read" authorization.
• The version of the OS-default browser on the computer (for example, Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows and Mozilla Firefox on Linux) must be supported by the BMC Remedy Mid Tier application. For more information, see the Compatibility Matrix for BMC AR System.

Accessing BMC Atrium Service Context from BMC Server Automation Console

1. Open the BMC Server Automation Console.
2. Right-click on the relevant server and select Service Context View.
    The login window for BMC Remedy Mid Tier is displayed.