Downtime is the amount of time measured in days, hours, minutes, and seconds (to the thousandths of a second) that an element remains at a specified condition for a specified time interval. That is, downtime is the total elapsed time during an outage.
Disabled objectives have no impact on downtime calculations.
You can report on downtime in the following reports:
SLA Status Report
SLA Compliance Report
The SLA Status Report offers a summary view, whereas the SLA Compliance Report provides more details. Both reports show the following:
Condition of the element based on its downtime
Amount of downtime in hours, minutes, and seconds
Click either report for a more detailed view, which is the same as the SLA Compliance Report. The status report can show data in the following units of time:
The multiple service report allows selecting an interval specified in a date range, or in months, weeks, days, hours, or minutes.
The SLA Compliance Report also allows selecting between an interval and a date range and shows the downtime status as indicated by a color in a calendar view. It also indicates the data available and data relevance, which are defined as:
Data Available: Amount of data available for the measured period of time as measured in a range of the following values:
0%
0.1%–33%
33.1%–65.9%
66%–99.9%
100%
Data Relevance: Relevancy of data to the reported period of time. For example, there can be data available but it is not considered (not relevant) if the associated time category is filtered out. It is indicated by the following range:
0%
0.1%–33%
33.1%–65.9%
66%–99.9%
100%
When running any of the reports on downtime in the Operations Center dashboard, specify how an outage is determined, which impacts the downtime calculation as follows:
Element Outages: An outage occurs when the condition of an element is Critical. The amount of time that the element spends in this condition is the downtime.
Specified Duration: Define the threshold condition for an element at which point an outage occurs. Also specify that the amount of time that the element must be at this condition or worse before an outage occurs. By default, the default is for the element to experience an outage when the condition is Critical for 0 seconds. The downtime is the amount of time the element is experiences an outage.
SLA or Objective Based: Outages are defined in objectives in SLAs. Opt to calculate the downtime based on outages as defined in a specific objective in an SLA or for the whole SLA, such as all of the objectives in an SLA.
For downtime reports, specify a calendar.
The ability to apply a calendar at report time allows:
Reporting on downtime for an element using any calendar and time category definition
Viewing downtime that was excluded from an SLA based on the SLA calendar and specified objective time categories
Downtime is not calculated during periods on the calendar when an outage is scheduled to occur (such as blackout periods).
If you specify a different calendar when viewing downtime and availability than that used by an SLA, the downtime and availability results might differ from those used to perform the SLA calculations. Outages also respect the SLA calendar, so you might see zero outages but also see downtime if you specify a different calendar. Therefore, be consistent when specifying the calendar to use for a report so that you do not see availability and downtime numbers that do not coincide with the SLA outage and health calculations.
Table 7-5 lists some uses of the calendar options.
Table 7-5 Implementing Scenarios for SLA Reporting
|
Requirement |
Then… |
|---|---|
|
Ignore all blackout calendars and dialog boxes in reports |
When selecting the calendar to use for the downtime reports, do not select the Include Blackout option for time categories. |
|
Include all blackout calendars and dialog boxes in reports |
When specifying the calendar for the downtime reports, be sure to select the Blackout option for time categories. Element blackout calendars are applied, as well as the specified report calendar. |
|
Ignore a scheduled maintenance dialog box in availability and downtime reports |
Create a new calendar that matches the agreement calendar but doesn’t include the maintenance dialog box, then configure the report to use the new calendar for downtime. Be sure to select the time categories to report on. Element blackout calendars are applied, as well as the specified report calendar. |
|
Ignore an outage in reports |
Do one of the following:
|
In the report, specify which time categories from the calendar are to be displayed in the report.
Downtime reports appear to filter out time categories, but the summary metrics do not exclude outages that occur during Blackout periods or any other time periods that are excluded based on Time Category selections.
When viewing downtime reports, filtering of time categories is independent of any agreement or objective, thereby allowing IT to assess what availability and downtime are during specific time categories, such as peak hours. For example, Blackout periods (and other time categories) can be included in an Internal IT report, in order to analyze whether service outages are occurring during scheduled maintenance periods, for example. Thus, Internal IT might decide to include/exclude Blackout periods from the availability report.
In the downtime report, the availability and downtime data values are filtered out based on the selected time categories. The Data Relevance shows an empty square icon with a value of 0 when a time period is not included in the availability and downtime metrics. In addition, an NA appears in the time periods that are filtered out of the report. Note that outage counts and durations, and the actual outage alarms are still visible in the Outage tab (if the display options are set to show this data) to illustrate when outages did occur. However, these outages are not affecting the availability and downtime data.