Planning considerations and worksheets for Infrastructure Management


Use the information in this topic to help define a new implementation of TrueSight Infrastructure Management. To plan the deployment of TrueSight Operations Management, see Planning.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of an TrueSight Infrastructure Management or BMC Impact Solutions installation, see Upgrading the Infrastructure Management components.


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In the Tools menu, select Export to Word to create a planning worksheet from this page for recording your implementation decisions.

If you are hosting multiple tenants, perform this activity for each tenant.

Related topic

Installing 

Planning activity

Worksheet

References

Decide on your type of implementation. 

You can deploy TrueSight Infrastructure Management to collect performance data, collect external events, manage service models, or any combination of these functions.

  • Data collection and event management—The TrueSight Infrastructure Management manages performance data from PATROL Agents, and manages external events from the BMC Event Adapter and PATROL Agents.
  • Event and impact management—The TrueSight Infrastructure Management manages external events from the BMC Event Adapter, and manages impact data from service models.

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If you are implementing service impact models, decide on the level of service models you plan to implement to determine whether or not you will need to integrate with Atrium CMDB and Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping. 

Also decide on whether you will have discrete or distributed service models.

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Plan your sources of event and performance data.

Size your deployment based on the best practices for achieving a scalable environment.

Design your deployment architecture and determine the number of PATROL Agent, Integration Services, TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers, and other systems needed to support the deployment.

This is important overall, but it also has detailed implications regarding policies that control how agents connect into the TrueSight Infrastructure Management infrastructure. If you have not completed and documented the implementation architecture, you will not know which Integration Service nodes various agents must connect to, and therefore will not be able to create the appropriate policies to control this.

Identify the integrations that you want to enable with TrueSight Infrastructure Management.

Ensure all systems meet the system requirements.

Acquire the hardware to support the planned deployment.

Review the network ports used by TrueSight Infrastructure Management and the compatibility matrix for IPv6 deployment.

For a port that conflicts with ports already used in your environment, determine whether the port can be configured during installation or whether the 3:port needs to be configured after installation.

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Review the security planning sections and record decisions about the security implementation.

Remedy Single Sign-On and the TrueSight Presentation Server provide authentication, user management, tenant management, and role-based permissions for TrueSight Infrastructure Management.

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Review the performance benchmarks and tuning sections and record plans for tuning the system.

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Data collection source worksheet

Plan your sources of event and performance data. Consult the following topics for details and requirements:

Deployment sizing worksheets

Read the Sizing-and-scalability-considerations-for-Infrastructure-Management to understand the scaling and sizing requirements of the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server, Integration Service, and monitoring solutions. It is important to estimate the size of your deployment correctly because the steps to follow and the design elements vary depending on the size of the deployment. Note that migrating from a single-server deployment to a multiple-server deployment is difficult unless you plan for it.

Follow the sizing and scalability considerations and best practices for your type of deployment and enter the sizing values in the tables that follow, as applicable.

Sizing worksheet for TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server data collection

Decide the type and volume of data to be collected and prioritize your data collection needs.

  • Identify what will be monitored in the environment and how that data will be used. Specifically identify from which systems, applications, and components in your environment you need performance metrics (and historic trend data), and from which components you will need events and alerts. This important decision dictates the requirements for all steps that follow.
  • The volume of data and events collected might be constrained by the amount of hardware or budget allocated, so prioritize and categorize the data being collected to make it easier to adjust to any hardware or budget constraints.

Characteristic

Value

Number of devices


Total number of attributes

An attribute is a property of a monitor instance. For example, attributes of a file system monitor instance are file size, file creation date and time, file modification date and time, file access date and time, and so on. In the PATROL Agent, an attribute corresponds to a parameter. Calculate the total number of attributes to be monitored based on the monitor type and the number of monitor instances per monitor type.

Polling periods have an effect on the number of attributes. Performance-benchmarks-and-tuning-for-Infrastructure-Management specifies the number of attributes based on 5-minute polling. If polling is faster, the effective number of attributes will be higher by a factor of 2.5.


Total number of monitor instances on the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server

A monitor instance is an object that is being monitored such as a file system, logical disk, and so on. In the PATROL Agent, a monitor instance corresponds to an application instance.


Duration of raw data retention


Duration of rate retention


Number of groups


Number of Service Level Objects (SLOs)


Sizing worksheet for Integration Service data collection

Characteristic

Value

Maximum number of monitor instances per Integration Service


Number of Integration Services


Maximum number of PATROL Agents


Sizing worksheet for data collection with multiple Integration Services running on the same Integration Service host

Characteristic

Value

Number of devices


Total number of attributes


Total number of monitor instances on the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server


Duration of raw data retention


Duration of rate retention


Number of groups


Number of SLOs


Maximum number of PATROL Agents that can be connected to each of the Integration Services


Sizing worksheet for Integration Service event management

Characteristic

Value

Number of intelligent events per day (does not apply to impact management deployments)


Number of external events per day 


Number of remote cells


Duration of event retention


Note

When the load of the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server is distributed among Integration Services, BMC recommends a maximum of three Integration Services instances running on a single Integration Service host computer. No additional hardware is required on the Integration Service host computer.

Sizing worksheet for impact management

Characteristic

Value

Number of configuration items (CIs) in the CMDB


Number of services in the CMDB


Number of CIs in the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server


Number of CIs per cell


Maximum number of CIs per service model


Number of services in the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server


Service model depth


Sizing worksheet for TrueSight Infrastructure Management users and consoles

Characteristic

Value

Concurrent number of users—operator console


Concurrent number of users—administrator console


Sizing worksheet for TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server memory configuration (MaxHeap metrics)

Characteristic

Value

Size of JServer


Size of rate


Size of agent controller


For information about tuning recommendations, see Performance-benchmarks-and-tuning-for-Infrastructure-Management.

Sizing worksheet for Integration Service memory configuration (MaxHeap metrics)

Characteristic

Value

Maximum size of the Integration Service (does not apply to impact management deployments)


Sizing worksheet for the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management integration

Characteristic

Value

Number of monitored devices


Number of monitor instances


Number of attributes


Duration RAW data retention


Duration RATE retention


Adapter type


Polling frequency, in minutes (stats, auto-sync)


Required number of Central Servers


Required number of Child Servers


Required number of TrueSight Infrastructure Management Data Collection Hosts


Required number of BMC BladeLogic Automation Servers


Total number of computers required


Total number of processors


Total memory required (in GB)



Database selection for the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers

Infrastructure Management uses the Oracle database in any deployment. The Oracle database must run on a different system within the same subnet network.

For information on deploying the database Considerations-and-best-practices-for-deploying-the-Oracle-database.


Deployment architecture worksheet

After sizing the deployment, determine the number of TrueSight Infrastructure Management Servers, Integration Services hosts, PATROL Agents, consoles, and other system needed. For guidance on selecting a deployment architecture, consult the deployment use cases in the worksheet.

Determine the location of all PATROL Agents and the respective Integration Services. At least one Integration Service must exist for each network, and generally the Integration Service must be close to the PATROL Agents connecting to it. This requirement minimizes the number of connections to the Infrastructure Management Server and makes firewall management easier because there is one connection per Integration Service. Consult the following topics for additional guidance about Integration Service host deployment:

Tip

Develop a clear strategy for assigning the PATROL Agents to each Integration Service. The TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server does not auto-balance the load between PATROL Agents and Integration Services, so the initial assignment is important. Although at least one Integration Service must exist per network, a convention based on name or function (or simple round-robin assignment) within the network is acceptable as long as you are consistent and avoid overloading any one Integration Service.

Deployment use case

TrueSight Infrastructure Management servers

Integration Service Hosts and services

Staging Integration Service hosts

Other systems to support consoles or integrations





















The following table lists which components must be installed on dedicated servers. For deployment on virtual machines, see Considerations-for-deploying-Infrastructure-Management-on-a-VM.

Component

Dedicated or shared server

TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server

Dedicated

Oracle database

Dedicated (installed on a server dedicated to Oracle databases)

Service Desk Integration Gateway

Shared (installed as part of the TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server)

Integration Service host1

Dedicated server for event and data integration processes

Integration Service

Shared on an Integration Service host computer

(Optional) Impact Integration Web Services

Shared on an Integration Service host computer

Remote Cell

Shared on an Integration Service host computer

BMC Event Adapters

Shared on an Integration Service host computer

PATROL Agents for remote monitoring2

Dedicated

1 The Integration Service host is not an installable component. It is a server dedicated to middle tier data and event collection processes.

2 PATROL Agents for remote monitoring include solutions for remote operating system monitoring, VMware vSphere, and other domains that involve larger amounts of data collected by a single agent.


Integration worksheet

Identify the integrations that you want to enable with TrueSight Infrastructure Management. Consult the following topics for details and requirements:

Integration

System requirements

Other considerations














System requirements worksheet

Consult the System-requirements-and-product-compatibility-for-Infrastructure-Management information to determine value for the TrueSight Infrastructure Management system components.

Component

Value

                                                                                            











Hardware worksheet

Specify the use for the hardware, such as TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server, Integration Service host, production, development, test, high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), Oracle database, and so on. See Hardware-requirements-to-support-small-medium-and-large-environments for supported configurations. For supported OS languages, see Language-information.

Configuration

Value

Server 1

Use

                                                                                                       

Environment sizing (small, medium, large)


Platform and language


RAM


Storage configuration


Server 2

Use


Environment sizing (small, medium, large)


Platform and language


RAM


Storage configuration


Server 3

Use


Environment sizing (small, medium, large)


Platform and language


RAM


Storage configuration


Server 4

Use


Environment sizing (small, medium, large)


Platform and language


RAM


Storage configuration


Server 5

Use


Environment sizing (small, medium, large)


Platform and language


RAM


Storage configuration


Server 6

Use


Environment sizing (small, medium, large)


Platform and language


RAM


Storage configuration



Where to go next

If you have not already done so, plan the deployment of the TrueSight Presentation Server and Remedy Single Sign-On. For information, see Planning-the-Presentation-Server-deployment. 

 

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