Analyzing business services

The following image illustrates the capabilities of Business Services view:

Supported technologies and entities

In the context of the business service and service pool, a server means a virtual machine of any of the supported technologies, or a standalone system. In the rest of the documentation of this feature, it is referred to as server.

For this feature, only servers of the following technologies are supported: VMware, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Hyper-V, KVM, XenServer, Standalone systems, and Kubernetes pods. The storage and network entities are not supported.

The connectors for these technologies connect with the data sources and collect data. For information about the data sources for each of the supported technologies, see Data-source-requirements-for-the-Business-Services-view.

The connector may assign a specific type to a system. If not assigned, the system type defaults to Generic. For information about system types, see System types.

BMC Helix Continuous Optimization produces indicators on Risk, Usage, and Days to saturation for each service pool or deployment that you have defined based on the indicator values of the  contained servers or pods respectively. For each business service or application, the indicators values are calculated based on the indicator values of contained service pools or deployments. The last 30 days of data is considered to calculate the indicator values. For details, see Indicators-used-in-the-Business-Services-view.

Before you begin

Make sure that the administrator has completed the following tasks:

• In the Administration tab:
  1. Imported the business service and application data for your multi-cloud infrastructure. 
  2. (Optional) Added the tags for business services manually or using the Generic-Tag-CSV-file-parser.
  3. (Optional) Added the tags for business drivers manually or using the Generic-Tag-CSV-file-parser. 
  4. Installed the Business Services view. 
  5. Granted you access to the view. 
• In the Views tab, using the Business Services view settings page: 
  1. Selected the domains to create the service pools.
  2. Configured the tag type for the business service category.

Optionally, the administrator can configure the long term historical data if you want to extend the forecasted saturation data from 90 days (default) to 180 days. 

If you are new to capacity views, see Getting-started-with-Views.

To understand the overall health and status of the business services

1. In the navigation pane of the Views tab, select Views > Business Services. 

   The Business Service Overview page displays all the business services. 
   You can choose to view the business services for a specific domain or tag by using the corresponding filters. For more information about domain and tag filters, see Filtering-data-displayed-in-Views.
   The Apply Domain Filter list displays only domains and their subdomains that are configured in the Settings page. 

2. Review and analyze the overview panel and charts on the page.

   1 Overview panel	Displays the following details for business services: Total number of business services for which forecasted saturation data is available.  Forecasted saturation for business services: Now - Business services that are already saturated, that is, the resource usage has already exceeded thresholds.  1 to 30 days - Business services that have reached capacity shortfall, and will be saturating anytime between 1 to 30 days. 31 to 60 days - Business services that will soon be experiencing capacity shortfall, and saturating anytime between 31 to 60 days. 61 to 90 days - Business services that will be saturating anytime between 61 to 90 days. No saturation - Business services that are healthy from the capacity management perspective, and are not at risk of saturation. To drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that category, click a number or category.
   2 Saturation by Service Category bubble chart	Provides a summary of the saturation by business services category and days to saturation. After you identify a problem, you can drill down into details, analyze it further, and take necessary actions. This chart displays the category based on the service category tag type and respective tags configured in the Settings page. For example, if you have selected Importance as a tag type and High, Medium, Low as tags, the chart displays data based on these tags.  By default, business services that do not have any associated tags are also displayed in the bubble chart under the Untagged category. To exclude the business services without tag values, clear the Show also untagged business services check box in the Settings page.  Key characteristics: The position, color, and size of bubbles indicate saturation risk severity, saturation status, and a number of business services affected. Identify situations on the bubble chart that may require immediate attention and prioritize remediation actions accordingly.  The color of each bubble corresponds to a saturation status: green for healthy business services, yellow and orange for business services that are approaching saturation, and red for saturated business services. The size of each bubble indicates how many business services are affected; the bigger the circle, the more business services are affected.   On clicking a bubble, drill down to a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that bubble. For details, see Viewing the business services summary. Using these visual cues, scan the chart to identify problems. For example, large red bubbles high on the Y axis might mean trouble. Red indicates the business service has saturated. Large bubbles mean more business services are affected. Higher on the Y axis means the business service is more important. * In this chart, only business services for which forecasted saturation data is available, are displayed. Forecasted saturation up to 180 days The Overview panel and the Saturation by Service Category chart display the 90 days of the forecasted saturation data, by default. The administrator can enable the display of 180 days of the forecasted saturation data by modifying the Use long term data to compute indicators parameter in the Optimizer thresholds page. For more information, see Configuring-and-managing-thresholds-for-metrics-and-indicators.
   3. Business Drivers	Displays the business drivers that are associated with the business services. The Business Drivers table provides the following information: Business Driver: Name of the business driver that is correlated with a business service.  Business Service: Name of the business service whose resource usage is correlated with a business driver metric. Supported Growth: The supported growth (absolute value) of the business driver before one of the resources of the associated business service exceeds the threshold value. Growth Limit: Indicates the extent to which the business driver can grow based on the available resources of the associated service pools. Unit: Measurement unit of the business driver metric. Supported Growth (%): The supported growth (in percentage) of the business driver before one of the resources of the associated business service exceeds the threshold value. To drill down to view the additional details of a business driver for further analysis, click a business driver name. For more information, see Viewing the business driver details.
   4. Risk pie chart	Displays the level of risk for business services to compare the low, medium, and high risk business services. It provides an indication that CPU, memory, or disk is either already saturated or will soon be experiencing capacity contention. Whether the business service is in High, Medium, or Low risk state is decided based on the threshold that you set in the Settings page. Key characteristics:  The color of each slice of the pie corresponds to a risk status of business services: green for low risk, orange for medium risk, and red for high risk business services. On a slice of the chart, you can view details of the specific category. On clicking a slice, you can drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that category. On clicking a category name in the legend, you can choose to remove the business services details for that category. * In this chart, only business services for which risk data is available, are displayed.
   5. Usage histogram	Displays the level of usage for business services, so that you can track which service pools have consumed the excess capacity. Key characteristics:  Business services are grouped and displayed as vertical bars based on their resources utilization. On clicking a bar, you can drill down into a summary table that comprises of business services falling under that bar. * In this chart, only business services for which usage data is available, are displayed.

   For information about the indicators displayed in the Business Service Overview view, see Indicators-used-in-the-Business-Services-view.
   

To view the details of a business driver

1. In the Business Service Overview page, click the business driver name for which you want to view the details. The Business Driver Details page is displayed. 
   
2. Review the general details: 
   1. Name of the business driver with the supported growth and days to saturation for this business driver.
   2. The resource of a pool that is nearing saturation. If the pool contains multiple resources, the resource that will saturate first within the next 90 days is displayed. Click the pool name to view the details. In case of no saturation, this information is not displayed. 
   3. Type of the business driver and name of the associated business service.
   4. Tags that are associated with this business driver.
3. The Summary tab is selected by default. Review the performance details for the selected business driver:
   1. View the Usage and Risk indicators of the associated business service in bar charts.
   2. View utilization chart for business driver events. When you hover over data points in the chart, values for those data points are displayed in the data tips. 
4. Click the Pools tab to know details of all pools associated with this business driver.
   

1. 1. View the usage and risk severity values and supported growth of the pools that are associated with the business driver. Supported growth indicates the growth in the business driver that can be supported based on the available resources of the pools. The confidence bands for a pool indicate the probability of the accuracy of the supported growth values.
   2. Click a pool name to view the additional details of the service pool or deployment. For more information, see To analyze the capacity at a service pool or deployment level.
   3. Click corresponding to a pool name to view the additional details for the supported growth that is forecasted for the business driver. The details include:
      1. The line chart that displays the changes in page views over time. The reference value is used to calculate the supported growth for the page views. This value is computed based on the 95^th percentile value of the business driver metric over the last seven days.
      2. The sliders that show the absolute and percentage values of the supported growth of page views within the upper and lower limits.
      3. The chart displays the business driver usage trend per day.

To view the business services and associated business drivers, applications, and pools

1. In the overview panel of the Business Service Overview page, click number of business services link to open the Business Services summary page. Alternatively, you can click a bubble on the bubble chart. 
   Applied filters: The business services data in the summary table is displayed based on the applied filters. For example, if the selected bubble has 10 saturated business services, data for those business services is displayed. You can clear the applied filters to view data for all business services.
   
2. To show or hide columns, select the action menu > Show/Hide columns that is located next to the table name. By default, some of the columns of the table are hidden.

3. Review the following details:

   Column	Description
   Business Service	Name of the business service that uses the resources of the public cloud provider or on-premises infrastructure. If this business service has applications associated with it, they are displayed as separate rows under the business service. Click the expander to view the application details such as name, usage, risk, and days to saturation values. Click a business service name for further analysis. For more information, see To analyze the impact of business drivers on a business service.
   Importance	Importance of this business service relative to other business services. The values are High, Medium, and Low.
   Business Driver	The business drivers that are correlated to the business service.
   Supported Growth	The absolute value of the supported business driver before one of the resources of the business service exceeds the threshold value.
   Usage	Indicates the usage value for the business service. If this business service has applications associated with it, the usage value for application is also displayed.
   Risk	Indicates the risk value for the business service. If this business service has applications associated with it, the risk value for application is also displayed.
   Pools Usage1	Indicates the usage value for the pools related to this application or business service along with the severity status. A pool can be a deployment (for Kubernetes) or a service pool (for cloud and on-premises). Each pool is displayed as a color-coded box. On hovering over a box, you can view the name and usage value of the specific pool along with the related application name, if applicable. On clicking a box, you can drill down into that pool and view its details. The legends for colors depicting the usage severity are displayed below the summary table.
   Pools Risk1	Indicates the risk percentage value for the pools related to this application or business service along with the severity status. A pool can be a deployment (for Kubernetes) or a service pool (for cloud and on-premises). Each pool is displayed as a color-coded triangle. On hovering over a triangle, you can view the name and risk value of the specific pool along with the related application name, if applicable. On clicking a triangle, you can drill down into that pool and view its details. The legends for colors depicting the risk severity are displayed below the summary table.
   Days to Saturation	Projected amount of time before the business service or application runs out of available capacity. It displays a number of days to saturation for the business service or application. If the days to saturation value is 91 days or beyond, this field displays No saturation. If the business service or application is already saturated, it displays Saturated.
   Bottleneck Resource	Displays the name of a resource that is already saturated or nearing saturation.

   ¹ The usage and risk severity values are decided based on the threshold that you set using the Thresholds for service pool option in the Settings page. 

For information about the indicators displayed in the Business Services view, see Indicators-used-in-the-Business-Services-view.

To view the details of a business service

1. In the Business Services page, click the business service name for which you want to view the details. The Business Service Details page is displayed. 
   
2. Review the general details: 
   1. Name and type of the business service.
   2. Tags that are associated with this business service.
3. The Summary tab is selected by default. Review the performance details for the selected business service:
   1. View the Usage and Risk indicators of the business service in bar charts.
   2. View the details of the business drivers that are correlated to the selected business service. The details include the absolute and percentage supported growth values and the growth limit.
   3. Click corresponding to a business driver to view the additional details for the supported growth. For more information, see Viewing the details of a business driver.

   4. Click What-if Simulation to predict the growth of resources in your business service based on the previous behavior or based on an expected increase in the business drivers. For details, see Creating-a-What-if-simulation-for-business-services-and-viewing-the-simulation-results. 

      Can I run a What-if simulation for any business service?

      No. If there are no business drivers associated with the business service, the What-if simulation option is disabled.  

4. Click the Applications tab to view the details of all applications associated with the business service, their usage and risk details, and the days to saturation. 
5. Click the Pools tab to know the performance details and related application of all pools associated with this business service. To view the details of a pool, click the name of the pool. For more information, see To analyze the capacity at a service pool or deployment level.
   
   

For information about the indicators displayed in this tab, see Indicators-used-in-the-Business-Services-view.

To analyze the capacity at a service pool or deployment level

Depending on whether your pool is a service pool or deployment, select a tab and view the details: