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 TrueSight 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 TrueSight 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 configuring 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 TrueSight Server Automation, and shows the details that users can see about each attribute:

Attribute name

Datatype

CI Type

List Attribute details

Deployed Changes

List

BMC_ComputerSystem

Job Name, Job Type, Status, Start Date, End Date, Change Type, Number of Changes

Detected Changes

List

BMC_ComputerSystem

Job Name, Status, Start Date, End Date, Number of Changes

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 TrueSight Server Automation job types and the corresponding change types are considered for Deployed Changes:

TrueSight Server Automation Job Type

Change Type

File Deploy Job

Deploy change

Software Deploy Job

Deploy change

Software Deploy Job Undo

Deploy change

BLPackage Deploy Job

Deploy change

BLPackage Deploy Job Undo

Deploy change

NSH Script Job

Configuration Change

Distribute Config objects

Configuration Change

Deregister config objects

Configuration Change

ACL Push Job

Configuration Change

Only the Snapshot Job is considered for Detected Changes. 

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

Setting up TrueSight Server Automation for BMC Atrium Service Context

Specifying TrueSight 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 TrueSight_Server_Automation_Suite.
  3. Set the User Namefield to the TrueSight 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 TrueSight Server Automation user.
  5. Set the Authentication String field to the name of the RBAC role applicable for the specified TrueSight Server Automation user.

Configuring TrueSight Server Automation web services for BMC Atrium Service Context

  1. On the TrueSight 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 user name for the BMC Atrium UDDI server:

    set WebServices RegistryServerPassword sa
  7. Restart the TrueSight Server Automation Application Server.
  8. (optional) To verify that TrueSight 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 TrueSight Server Automation information for BMC Atrium Service Context.
  2. On the computer hosting the TrueSight Server Automation Application Server, run the createServiceContextArtifacts.nsh script from the TrueSight Server Automation installation folder\NSH\Scripts.
    This script creates all the artifacts required for Service Context in TrueSight Server Automation. 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.

Note

For getDetectedChangesRequest webservice call, the snapshot jobs in running state are not pulled into service context.

Additional requirements for BMC Atrium Service Context

  • You must enable the TrueSight 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 TrueSight 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 TrueSight Server Automation Console, the role associated with the TrueSight 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 TrueSight Server Automation Console

  1. Open the TrueSight 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.

 

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