Configuring global settings for service health

Related topics

Customizing health score and health status

BMC Helix AIOps provides a centralized way to manage how service health is computed across your environment, ensuring reduced configuration effort and improved operational efficiency.

As an administrator, use the Manage Service Health page to configure global settings for service health. By defining these global settings, you ensure that all services in your environment follow the same health calculation logic and thresholds. This approach improves accuracy, efficiency, and visibility in service monitoring.

When are global configuration updates applied?

Global configuration updates, such as changes to health score computation, balancing profiles, health impact score, or health status, are not applied to existing services immediately. They are applied only when a service is updated.

A service is considered updated when any related element changes, such as:

An event rule is created or modified.
A CI relationship is added or updated.
The health profile is created or modified.

When any of these updates occur, the service automatically receives the latest global configuration.

To include external CI events in health score computation

You can include events from configuration items (CIs) that are topologically connected but outside the defined service boundary while computing the service health score. However, at least one CI that is part of the service’s own topology must be impacted to be considered in the service’s health computation. This option is available only when the Multi-service situations feature is enabled on the Manage Situations page. For more information, see Configuring ML-based situations.

To include external CI events in health score computation, perform the following steps:

Select Configurations > Manage Service Health.
To include events from topologically connected CIs in the service health score computation, toggle the Include External CI Events option.
This option is disabled by default.
Click Save Health Profile.

When the Include External CI Events option is enabled, and the service topology contains both CIs that are part of the service and external CIs, impacted events from both types of CIs are included in the health score computation. However, at least one CI within the service’s own topology must be impacted to be included in the health score computation.

To include impacted events associated with external CIs in the health score computation:

Enable the enrich_external_health_indicator_with_service property. To use this capability, contact BMC Helix Support.

To set the service health score computation mechanism

Select how the health score of a service is computed.

Select Configurations > Manage Service Health.
Select from one of the following options:
- Node Kind (default): Considers the node kind (such as database, host, or virtual machine), node weightage, and indexing to determine the health score. For more information, see Health score computation by node kind.
- Impact Severity: Considers the severity of the impact to determine the health score of a service. The score of the node with the highest impact (lowest score) is considered the service's health score. For more information, see Health score computation by impact severity.
Click Save Health Profile.

Global balancing profiles

Global balancing profiles let you apply consistent thresholds across multiple services to minimize event noise and ensure that service health is affected only when thresholds are exceeded. Instead of configuring balancing profiles individually, you can define them once at the global level. Balancing profiles configured from the Manage Service Health page are applied to all services, including the child services that meet the defined criteria. To add a balancing profile for an individual service, see Adding balancing profiles.

The configuration applies to services that are created by using BMC Helix Discovery or any third-party application.
A global profile applies only when matching CI Kinds exist in a service.
You can define up to 10 global balancing profiles.
Individual service level profiles take precedence over the global profile.

To add a balancing profile for multiple services

Select Configurations > Manage Service Health.
Click Add Balancing Profile.
The Define Balancing Profile pane is displayed.
Enter a unique profile name.
Select a base CI Category, and based on that category, select the base CI Kind.
The categories are displayed based on the CIs that are a part of the service.
Select the following options:
1. Link Kind: Select the type of relationship between the Base CI and the related CI nodes.
2. Evaluation scope CI Kind: Select the related CI Kind.
  Based on the selection, the balancing profile is applied to the relevant CI kinds.
  For example, if Hosted Software Link Kind and Virtual Machine Evaluation scope CI Kind is selected, the balancing profile is applied to all CIs of a Virtual Machine that have a Hosted Software relationship with a CI Cluster.
In the Fault tolerance policy, select the quantifier by which you want to define the balancing rule:
- CI Percentage: Specify the percentage threshold after which the service is impacted.
  For example, if the value is set to 80%, the service is impacted when more than 20% of resources stop working.
- CI Count: Specify the minimum number of related CIs after which the service is impacted.
  For example, if the value is set to 20, the service is impacted when more than 20 CIs stop working.
Click Save.
The profile is displayed on the Manage Service Health page.
When you define the balancing profile from the Manage Service Health page, it is displayed in the Define Health Profile section of all services where the Use default configuration option is enabled.

Important

The health score of a service is displayed as 95 even if the threshold specified in the profile is not breached.

For example, if the CI percentage is specified as 80%, the service is still displayed as healthy even if 10% of the resources are impacted, and the health score gets updated to 95. This score informs the operators that the service, while showing some impact, is not impacted enough to cause disruption.

To edit or delete a balancing profile

Select Configurations > Manage Service Health.
Locate the balancing profile to edit or delete.
From the Action menu for the profile, select Edit or Delete.
Update the profile as required.
Click Save or OK to delete the profile.
If you add any CIs, the health score computation for the newly added CIs begins 15 minutes after the services are updated.

To set the service impact health score for all services

Customize how health scores are computed and weighted for all services to maintain consistency in health assessment. You can override the global configuration for specific services by updating their individual health profiles.

Select Configurations > Manage Service Health.
Expand the Health Score Configuration section.
Enter the thresholds or use the up and down arrows to adjust them.
Fractions or decimal points are not allowed.
For example, if you update the impact score value to Critical = 20, then 20 points are deducted from 100 for every critical event.
Click Save Health Profile.
It might take a few seconds for the recomputed score to reflect across services.

To set the service health status for all services

Configure consistent health status thresholds that apply globally across all services, reducing manual configuration while allowing flexibility for service-specific customization. You can override the global configuration for specific services by updating their individual health profiles.

Select Configurations > Manage Service Health.
Expand the Health Status Configuration section.
Enter the thresholds or use the up and down arrows to adjust them.
Fractions or decimal points are not allowed.
(Optional) To exclude severity from health score calculations, clear the Enabled check boxes.
Click Save Health Profile.
It might take a few seconds for the changes to be reflected across services.