Troubleshooting change impact analysis from Smart IT

When triggering Impact Analysis from a change request, the process of calculating the impact takes a long time to return the results or the impact analysis is not triggered at all.


Issue symptoms

After initiating an impact analysis from a change request in Smart IT, the following message is displayed in the Smart IT User Interface (for longer than expected) as shown in the following screenshot:
An impact analysis is being prepared for this Change Request

impact analysis_1.png

The record in the AST:Simulation_Status form (where SimulationID matches the change request ID) does not reach the required final status of Relationship Assessment Completed. For example, it remains in Analysis In Progress as shown in the following screenshot:

impact_analysis_2.png

Issue scope

When you open a change request from Smart IT and click on More > Initiate Impact Analysis.

IA.png

When you select the Submit and Prepare Impact Analysis option when submitting a new change request in Smart IT:

IA2.png

Resolution

Follow the steps given below to check the impact simulation functionality.

Task

Action

Steps

1

Check if Impact Simulation is working from the CMDB Portal.

See Running an impact simulation in the BMC CMDB documentation.

If the Impact Simulation does not work from the CMDB Portal, collect the following log files

  • Enable debug logging for the Atrium Impact Simulation (AIS) plugin (CMDB Portal -> Configuration -> Core Configurations -> Impact Simulator -> Logging -> Log Level: Debug).
    For more information, see Accessing and navigating the CMDB Portal

  • Enable debug logging for the Java Plugin Server on port 9556 that runs the AIS plugin

Reproduce the issue and collect these log:

  • ais.log
  • AtriumPluginSvr.log

 The default location for these logs on the AR Server:

  • (Windows) ARSystemInstallDir\ARSystem\ARServer\Db
  • (UNIX) ARSystemInstallDir/ARSystem/Db

Review the Atrium Impact Simulator error messages or the BMC Knowledge Base for any errors found, or share the logs with BMC Customer Support.

2

If the simulation models have more than 1000 results

Fine tune the performance.

For more information, see CMDB Impact Simulator performance best practices

3

If the simulation is running successfully from the CMDB Portal, but not in Smart IT and relevant records are present in the AIS:Simulation and AST:Simulation_Status forms.

  1. Login to Mid Tier.
  2. Open the AIS:Simulation and the AST:Simulation_Status forms and perform the following Advanced Search against each form:
    'SimulationID' = "<yourChangeRequestID>"
  3. If the value of the Simulation Status field in the Results List of the AIS:Simulation form is “6” (which equals ’Simulation Complete’):
    Step3.png
    and the value for the ‘Simulation Status’ field on the record AST:Simulation_Status form is Analysis In Progress, then log in to Developer Studio and search for the AST:Simulation_Status_CheckforStatusUpdate escalation.
  4. Manually run the escalation. The value of the Simulation Status field on the AST:Simulation_Status form should change to Analysis Completed.

  5. After the escalation completes its run, if the escalation pool needs to be changed to utilize a separate pool, assign a specific pool to the escalation. For more information, see the How to assign a specific Pool to an Escalation knowledge article.

For additional information, see the Knowledge article 000370147 on BMC Communities.

4

For AR Server Group environments only: 
If (either consistently or intermittently) no record is found for a change request in the  AIS:Simulation form after triggering an impact analysis.

Check Knowledge article 000286629 for the correct configuration for the AIS Plugin in version 8.x and above on AR Server Groups (all AR Servers should point to the same AIS plugin on one and the same AR Server in the group)

For more information, see the following topics in the CMDB and Smart IT documentation:

5

If the CI is available on the AIS:Simulation and the AIS:Simulation_Status forms, but the status is Simulation status is stuck at Analysis Completed.

Follow the steps given to help progress the value of the Simulation Status field to Relationship Assessment Completed to complete the preparation of the impact analysis for Smart IT:

  1. Confirm that one Smart IT Server in the environment is setup as master server.
    1. Check the following file on all Smart IT Servers in the environment:
      <SmartITTomcat>\external-conf\smartit_config.properties
    2. One of the Smart IT servers should have the master.serve property set to true:
      master.server = true

    1. All other Smart IT server (in case of a cluster) should have this property in the file, and it should be set to false.
      In case the master.server property is not present in the properties file, that server will by default act as a master server.
  2. The SMT:Social_ImpactAnalysis_PushNotification form contains entries for pending Push Notifications and Impact Simulation events to be processed by Smart IT Server. Perform these checks against this form in Mid-Tier:
    1. Execute the following Advanced Search query. If there are any matching records, delete them and see if this resolves the issue for impact simulations:
      'Classification' = "IMPACT_EVENT" AND 'InstanceId' = $NULL$
    2. Execute the following Advanced Search query to check if there is a large amount of old records that could be impacting performance. In case a large number of records is found, clear this backlog to see if this resolves the issue for newly triggered impact simulations:
      'Classification' = "PUSH_NOTIFICATION" OR 'Classification' = "IMPACT_EVENT"


 

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