Understanding service blueprints

Blueprints are predefined service templates or building blocks that can be readily used by organizations for defining services when creating service models. Service blueprints visually map the steps in a service process and make it easier to design a new service or improve an existing service. The service blueprints play a significant role in managing service operations, service designing, and service positioning.

Watch the following video (3:34) to get an overview of service blueprints and learn about their advantages:

icon_play.pngWatch the YouTube video about The advantages of Service Blueprints in BMC Helix AIOps.

A service blueprint in BMC Helix AIOps contains CIs having filtering rules and their topological relationships. These filtering rules synchronize the data and configuration of the service model dynamically. The topological relationship is made up of interconnected CIs and CI kinds. Based on your organization's needs, you can define a blueprint by:

  • Starting with an application node, such as Namespace, and have the rest of the service contain one or more applications and infrastructure nodes to create an application to infrastructure map
  • Starting with an infrastructure node, such as Host, and have the rest of the service contain one or more applications and infrastructure nodes to create an infrastructure to application map
Can I use the same blueprint multiple times?
  • You can use a blueprint more than once in a service model. However, you can use a particular blueprint only once in a single service. 
  • You can use a combination of blueprints in a single service.

Example

Becky gets requests to create new services to manage the operations of her organization. While creating the service models to map these services, Becky realized that there are a few common processes that are part of each of these service models. For example, the Kubernetes cluster service and virtual applications management service that are essential and basic services are part of many other services, such as Kubernetes deployment, network availability monitoring, and virtual data center operations.

In this example, Becky defines the common basic services such as Kubernetes deployment, network availability monitoring, and virtual data center operations as service blueprints.

CIs (Nodes) and CI Kind (Node Kind)

A service blueprint can consist of the following types of entities:

  • A node is an object that represents an entity in the environment discovered by BMC Helix Discovery and stored in the datastore. Nodes can be connected to other nodes by using relationships. Any configuration item (CI) can represent a node and multiple CIs can be connected to form a topological relationship.
  • A node kind is the type of a node, such as a Host or Software Instance. The default set of nodes and their named attributes and relationships are defined in the BMC Helix Discovery taxonomy. A node kind can also have extended attributes. Although the extended attributes are not defined in the BMC Helix Discovery taxonomy, they are used by some CIs in BMC Helix AIOps. Most node kinds have a key that uniquely identifies the entity in the environment. In BMC Helix AIOps, a node kind in known as a CI kind. A number of CIs and CI kinds can be connected to form a topological relationship.

 Supported CI kinds and relationships

BMC Helix AIOps supports all inferred node kinds (except the following) as CI kinds that are supported by BMC Helix Discovery. For the complete list of supported CI Kinds, see Inferred nodes.

The following node kinds are not supported: 

  • Activity Record 
  • Cluster Member
  • Cluster Resource
  • Cluster Service
  • IP Address
  • Processor Info
  • Subnet
  • Location

BMC Helix AIOps supports all the relationships of a supported CI Kind as supported by BMC Helix Discovery. For information about the relationships of a CI Kind, see the documentation for an individual inferred node in BMC Helix Discovery.

Where to go from here

Using-out-of-the-box-blueprints

Creating-service-blueprints

 

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