Creating service models in CMDB by using Dynamic Service Modeling

Use the Dynamic Service Modeling tool to automatically create relationships between CIs and business, technical, or application service CIs. This saves time and effort of manually creating relationships between CIs and the services to which they contribute.

The high level steps to create a service model by using Dynamic Service Modeling are as follows:

Define queries for CIs that contribute to a business, technical, or application service.
Specify the frequency with which these queries are run.
CMDB runs the queries and finds the CIs matching your criteria. CMDB then creates relationships between these CIs and the CI representing the business, technical, or application service.

The following animation shows a highly simplified example to explain the concept of Dynamic Service Modeling.

The queries that you define in the older versions of CMDB or Atrium Console are also displayed in the Dynamic Service Modeling page.

Before you begin

You must have one of the following permissions to access the Dynamic Service Modeling page in CMDB:

Administrator
RE Definition Author

The business service CI must match one of these criteria to be listed in the Dynamic Service Modeling page:

The ServiceType attribute of the CI has the value as either BusinessService, TechnicalService, or Unknown.
It is of class BMC_Application.
It has a dynamic service model query associated with it.

To create service models in CMDB by using Dynamic Service Modeling

Open the Dynamic Service Modeling page.
CIs > Dynamic Service Modeling
From the list, select a service you want to model.

The service CIs representing the service you select appear in the Create and schedule queries for CIs list.
In the Queries column, click the down arrow next to Show to view the details of the service CI.
If there is no query defined for this CI, the Create Query button appears.
Click Create Query.
The Create Query for Dynamic Service Modeling page opens.
If the service CI you are looking for does not appear in the Dynamic Service Modeling page, perform the following steps:
Steps (3)
Search for the service CI.
In the search results, expand the CI properties by clicking the down arrow.
Click Map Related CIs.
The Create Query for Dynamic Service Modeling page opens.
In the Query Name field, enter a name for the query.
If you retain the Query Type toggle key in its default position, the query is visible to other users in the query library after you save it.
Use the Class Palette option to define a new query or the Query Library option to use a pre-exisiting query.
For more information on graph queries, see Creating-a-graph-query-to-search-for-a-CI.
Click Test query to make sure the query finds the correct CIs.
Click Save.
The Dynamic Service Modeling page opens, listing the CI and the query.
Click the down arrow under Show Queries to view the queries.
In the Run Query Every fields, set the frequency of the search.

Important

You can also create a graph query for a CI in Explorer by right-clicking the CI and selecting Map Related CIs.

Do not refresh a page while creating a query. You might get the error this.config is undefined.

Defining a dynamic service model for a payroll service scenario

Scenario

Consider the following example of Allen the service manager who wants to maintain an updated payroll service in CMDB. He wants the CMDB to be updated every 24 hours with all the new devices that are added to the payroll department.

Allen searches for a BMC_BusinessService class with ServiceType attribute with the value Payroll.
The service CI representing the payroll service appears in the search results.
Allen expands the CI properties by clicking the down arrow.
Allen clicks Map Related CIs.
The Create Query for Dynamic Service Modeling page opens.
In the Query Name field, he types Payroll Service.
He uses the Class Palette option or the Query Library option to create a graph query that specifies the following CI search criteria:
- A BMC_ComputerSystem class that is associated with BMC_Person class.
- The BMC_Person class having the PersonDepartment equal to Payroll or any other name that is given to the department.
He clicks Test query to make sure the search results are as expected and then saves the query.
The Dynamic Service Modeling page opens listing the CI and the query.
In the Queries column, he clicks the down arrow beside Show to view the queries.
In the Run Query Every field, he enters 24 and selects Hours in the list.
The query runs once a day and assigns the CIs from the search results to the business service CI.

Result

The service model is regularly updated with CIs that match the criteria you specified. You can change the frequency of the service model updates, if required, by using the Run Query Every field in the Dynamic Service Modeling page.

Where to go from here

You can perform other activities such as impact simulation on the service model. For information on simulating impact, see Simulating-the-impact-of-changes-to-CIs.