Identifying the impacted CI nodes from CI topology view

When a service is impacted, operators or site reliability engineers (SREs) need to have the complete visual representation of the CI topology. This information is especially useful if the service design is dynamic and complex.

The CI topology in BMC Helix AIOps is a structural map that shows the interconnectivity between various CI nodes of a service model. This map helps the operators: 

  • Visualize the interconnection between CI nodes as topology mapping with the impacted and nonimpacted paths and nodes
  • Identify the impacted nodes and impact path and to work on a resolution immediately

Related topics

Service-health-score-and-health-timeline

Monitoring-service-health

BMC Helix AIOpsperforms an automatic CI topology mapping that represents the relationship between a service and its nodes with node details, such as events, incidents, and changes end to end. The end-to-end topology map presents the complete picture of all CI elements starting with the infrastructure nodes, network devices, hosts, clusters, namespaces, and all the application nodes of a service. The topology visualization supports the grouping and ungrouping of nodes of the same CI kinds and clearly identifies the impacted node with additional drill-down views to investigate the impact cause.

Scenario

At APEX Global IT, there is an end-to-end interconnected E-Banking application service with child nodes, such as a Core-banking infra, a Kubernetes(K8s) cluster with multiple pods, a deployment node, a host named Host A associated with a Namespace, and some network devices. The service has turned into a critical health state on a particular day.

Susan, an operator at APEX Global IT, views the service details and uses the CI Topology option to view the complete map, and expands the nodes and grouped CI kinds to identify the problem nodes. Susan sees that the deployment node has turned into a critical state, which has impacted the Core-banking infra, but not Host A. It will eventually impact the overall E-Banking service, as shown in this flow diagram.

SS48_CI_Topology_Example.png

To view and identify the impacted nodes by using CI topology

  1. On the Services page, click a service name.
    By default, the     CI Topology tab displays the topological map of the service CIs. The CI nodes are displayed according to the node impact severity status along with all the CI categories defined as part of the service model.

    Tip

    If you have a large number of CIs in a service topology, use the search box to locate a particular CI. When the CI is located, it is highlighted. If a filter is already applied and CI is not present in the filtered view, the CI is  searched in the entire CI topology. When the CI is located, it is highlighted and the filter is cleared.

    By default, when you click a service, the CI Topology tab is displayed. To display the Service Hierarchy tab by default, open the tab, click the actions menu Actions Menu.jpg, and select Set as default view.

  2. (Optional) To change the topology map orientation, use the hierarchy list and select any of the options available.
  3. If there are many nodes of the same CI kind in the map, use Enable grouping by CI Kind enable_grouping_by_ci_kind.pngto group the nodes of the same CI kind.
    Note that 10 or more CIs of the same kind are automatically aggregated together. If there are more than 10 CIs of the same kind, they are grouped as nine nodes plus one. The single node is a grouped node, which can be expanded to view the additional nodes as shown in the following figure, where the Additional 'Software Instance' CIs node is an an aggregation of two more nodes.
    SS49_ciTopology_group.png
  4. Expand the grouped nodes and select any CI node to view and analyze node-specific details:
    • Select the impacting events, incidents, change details, and the services that are impacted directly or indirectly due to this node.
    • From the Event Details summary pane, launch BMC Helix Operations Management to analyze the complete event details.
    • If the CI topology is for a service belonging to an application instrumented by OpenTelemetry, depending on the node type, the cross-launch link to an OpenTelemetry dashboard appears:
      • If you click a grouped OTel node, the Trace Views link appears on the Node Details page. Click the link to open the cross-launch links to various OpenTelemetry dashboards.

      • If you click an individual OTel Span node, the View OTel Dashboard link appears on the Node Details page. Click the link to launch the OTel Trace Details dashboard.

      • If you click an individual OTel Host or OTel Service node, the View OTel Dashboard link appears on the Node Details page. Click the link to launch the OTel Service Overview dashboard.

      • If you click an individual OTel Service Namespace node, the View OTel Dashboard link appears on the Node Details page. Click the link to launch the OTel Namespace Overview dashboard.

    • Click Show All Attributes to view attributes of the node.
      These attributes are retrieved from the  BMC Helix Discovery taxonomy.

  5. (Optional) Use the advanced filter options to query for a single node or part of the topology map that you are interested in viewing.
    The advanced filter is capable of displaying only the impact path and all the impacted CIs in that path.
    For example, if you want to query and view only the Host CI Kind, select Advanced filter > Kind > Host. If you want to view the nodes impacted by the causal node, select Advanced filter > Impacted CIs > Impacts.
     

    Important

    If a service contains network devices and network interfaces as the CIs, enable the Detailed Network view advanced filter option to view the attributes of these CIs.

    Tip

    Based on the length of the selected criteria and the available space to display content, the filters are automatically tagged and grouped as +1 active, +2 active, and so on. Click the tagged number to view the rest of the filters in the group.

     

  6. (Optional) Use the various display options to maximize or minimize, drag or position, zoom in/out, and fit to center the topology map.

 

Where to go from here

Based on the health of and impact on a service, you can perform any of the following tasks: 

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*