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Description

This page describes an example of how to create availability monitoring using Spectrum Service Manager. Service Manager can be used to monitor the availability of a service based on one or more parameters from Spectrum. This monitoring can then be used to create availability reports using Spectrum Report Manager.

Requirements

This description assumes you have a working Spectrum environment with Spectrum Service Manager installed and configured. It also assumes you are familiar with normal Spectrum operations. To be able to follow the descriptions below, the following is required:

• Access to Spectrum with the required access privileges (typically Administrator or a custom privileges configuration)
• Monitoring on the parameters you want to use for availability reporting should already be configured
• Availability parameters should be known:
  • Uptime requirements, for example 99.8% between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm (08:00-17:00)
  • Customer name

Preparations

Before starting the monitoring configuration, make sure the parameters which should be used to report on are available in Spectrum. If you are using a Southbound Gateway integration with automatic creation of Eventmodels, you may have to manually create an Eventmodel if no events have been received yet.

Implementation

This description only covers the Service and SLA configuration. It does not describe how you can use the configured SLA to create availability reports in Spectrum Report Manager.

A service configuration consists of Services, Customers and SLAs and a relationship between those components.

Services can be defined on different levels. This example uses basic and combined services. The basic services just look at one system or parameter. The combined service takes these basic services and combines them using rules, for example to model redundancy.

The steps below assume you are already logged in to Spectrum OneClick with the appropriate access privileges.

Create Basic Service

First we will create the basic services which are directly related to a specific system or alarm.

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor
• Select the Services tab
• Follow these steps for every parameter you want to include in the availability reporting
  • Click on Create...
  • Enter the applicable information in the form
    • The required Criticality field is used to help determine the Impact value for an outage
    • When a service is "in maintenance" it is not actively monitoring any of it resources
    • If you only want reporting but no alarms based on service health, you can disable Generate Service Alarms
    • The Service Policy determines the influence of specific alarms on the service health. You can select one of the default policies, or create your own using the Service Policy Editor.
      
  • Select one or more resources or create a resource monitor to include in the service on the Resources tab
  • Configure custom alarm filters on the Alarm Filters tab if required
  • Click on Create to create the new service

Configure Combined Services

Once all basic services are created, they can be combined using rules to model redundancy or combine multiple parameters into one availability monitor. These two examples will be described here.

Model a redundancy service

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor (if not already open from the previous step)
• Select the Services tab
• Click on Create...
• Enter the information in the form as before with the basic services
• Select Service Health Redundancy for the Service Policy. This policy states that the service is only down when all its components are down. In any other case the service will be degraded or slightly degraded.
• On the Resources tab, use the search icon to find the basic services you created and want to include as component of the combined service
• Click on Create to create the new service

Model a service combining multiple parameters

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor (if not already open from the previous step)
• Select the Services tab
• Click on Create...
• Enter the information in the form as before with the basic services
• Select Service Health High Sensitivity for the Service Policy. This policy states that the health of the service is determined by the worst status of its components. This means that if any of the components is down, the combined service is down.
• On the Resources tab, use the search icon to find the basic services you created and want to include as component of the combined service
• Click on Create to create the new service

Create Customer

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor (if not already open from the previous step)
• Select the Customers tab
• Click on Create Customer...
• Enter all applicable information in the form
  • The required Criticality field is used to help determine the Impact value for an outage
• Click Create to create the new customer

Link Services to Customers

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor (if not already open from the previous step)
• Select the Services tab
• For each of the services you created:
  • Select the service
  • Click on Select Service Customers... on the Customers tab in the lower part of the screen
  • Select the customer(s) for this service
  • Click OK to confirm

Create SLA

The SLA is used to group services together for one customer with the same availability guarantees.

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor (if not already open from the previous step)
• Select the SLAs tab
• Click on Create...
• Enter the information for the SLA in the form
  • Do not select any of the options in the Guarantees section at this point unless you have only one rule to include for this SLA
  • Only select the top level combined services, you don't need to include the basic component services
• Click Create to create the new SLA
• Select the SLA you just created
• Click on Select SLA Customers... on the Customers tab in the lower part of the screen
• Select the customer(s) for this service
• Click OK to confirm

Configure SLA Guarantees

You can configure multiple SLA guarantees for each SLA. For example you can configure guarantees for a complete environment and at the level of it's components like application and database systems. This can be useful to provide more detailed reporting on which component caused which service outage.

• Go to Tools -> Utilities -> Service Editor (if not already open from the previous step)
• Select the SLAs tab
• Select the SLA for which you want to add guarantees
• Click on Create... on the Guarantees tab
• Enter the information for the guarantee and select the services or service components for which you want to apply the guarantee
• Click Create to create the new guarantee