Creating baselines

Baselines are stored in AR System tables, not in BMC Helix CMDB.

Overview of baseline steps

1. Use the Baseline Wizard, associate a name, description, and permission groups for your baseline.
2. Specify the name of the source dataset that contains your designated baseline CIs.
3. Specify a qualification set to narrow the number of CIs in the baseline. To do this, use the Qualification Builder which is included in the Baseline Wizard workflow.
4. (Optional) Specify the include and exclude sets to be used for comparing CI attributes. Use the Qualification Builder which is included in the Baseline Wizard workflow.

Drift management uses a Qualification Builder to build qualifications that narrow a subset of CIs. Drift management also enables you to group several qualifications into a qualification set, and provides the ability to select a set of CIs based on a relationship. For example, you can select the CIs of computer systems that are related to a particular business service.

Before you begin

• Make sure you have the required permissions to make changes in drift management.
• Understand how qualification sets are created, and how Include and Exclude sets work. See, Creating-qualification-sets-and-include-and-exclude-sets. 

To create a baseline

1. In the drift management console, select Authoring > Baselines.
2. Click Create.
   The Baseline Wizard is displayed.
3. Provide the following information about the baseline you are creating, and then click Next.
   • Name and Description: A unique name and description.
   • Accessible To: Controls who can see the baseline you are creating.

4. Select a dataset or a snapshot of a dataset, which you previously created using the Snapshot Job Wizard, and then click Next.
   This dataset can be BMC Asset or an existing CMDB dataset, or it can be a dataset that you created when running a snapshot job. Only datasets you have permission to view are displayed.

   Warning

   If you create a dataset by using reconciliation to use as the source dataset for a snapshot, baseline, or target, you must add Drift Master permissions to the CMDBRowLevelSecurity attribute of the dataset for the dataset to be visible from the Snapshot Job, Baseline, or Target Wizards.

5. Specify the qualification set from the following options to apply to the baseline, and then click Next.
   
   • Create: To create a new qualification set.
   • Select: To use an existing qualification set.
6. (Optional) In Specify Include Set, specify an Include set to use with the qualification set, and then click Next.
   Provide an Include set by either creating a new set or selecting an existing set.
7. (Optional) From the Specify Exclude Set pane, specify an exclude set to use with the qualification set, and then click Next.
8. Click Done.
   The baseline you just created is listed in the console.

To modify a baseline

1. In the drift management console, select Authoring > Baselines.
2. From the Baselines List of Items pane, select the baseline to modify.
3. Click Edit.
4. Make the changes in Baseline Wizard.
   All console detail screens are updated to display the modification details.

To delete a baseline

1. In the drift management console, select Authoring > Baselines, and then select the baseline you want to delete.
2. Click Delete.
   A confirmation dialog box appears.