Operations Center provides features for identifying the root cause of a service failure as well as the impact of an element’s failure:
Show Root Cause: Provides a quick way to identify elements that caused a change in the condition of a higher-level element.
This option is not available for the Enterprise, Administration, and Elements root elements.
Show Impacted: Helps to identify the business services impacted by the failure of lower-level services.
Use these features together to identify dependencies among service objects and to manage the impact of an object on overall service delivery:
Use the Root Cause feature to identify lower-level objects that caused a change in the condition of a higher-level object.
Element hierarchies display in their entirety. The Root Cause feature ignores the Display Elements as Children setting for all objects in a hierarchy.
To view Root Cause information:
Right-click an element in the Explorer pane, then select Show Root Cause to open its dialog box.
The Root Cause dialog box consists of the Root Causes and Details sections.
Use the information in the dialog box to identify lower-level elements that affected the change in the higher-level element’s condition:
Root Causes: Identifies the elements that affected the selected element’s state. In the previous illustration, New York Center is down because Port 5 is down and Port 8 is malfunctioning.
Details: Identifies the hierarchy of the elements involved. Users who do not have the appropriate security permissions to view an element that is the root cause cannot view the root cause tree that is normally displayed in the Details pane.
Click Refresh to update the following information:
The state of the selected element and the root cause of the selected element’s state
The service hierarchy definitions in which the selected element participates (Hierarchy files are described in the Operations Center Adapter and Integration Guide)
The state of the root cause element in the service hierarchy definition that impacts the selected element’s state
The state of any element in the service hierarchy definition in which the selected element participates
Perform any of the following actions on elements displayed in the Root Cause dialog box:
Double-click an element.
The view updates to display information for the element.
Position the cursor over the element.
Tooltip information displays for the element.
Right-click an element, then select a menu option.
For descriptions of the menu options, see Section B.0, Element and Alarm Options.
In the Layout view, display information about an element that is a root cause, perform management operations on the element, then redisplay information about the high-level object to determine if its condition changed.
The Show Impacted feature identifies higher-level objects that are affected by the condition of a selected element. Use the Impacted dialog box to change the view to any of the impacted objects. Perform operations on them, then return to the originally selected object. Drill up the hierarchy to determine if the selected element impacts multiple services.
Elements in the Elements hierarchy are created using adapters, which are the integration points between Operations Center and third-party management systems. For event-based adapters or adapters where the condition is set by a network management system, no elements display as root causes unless algorithms are set to determine the condition. For more information about algorithms, see the Operations Center Service Modeling Guide.
Impacted information recognizes security settings and displays only the elements that the user is authorized to view.
To view higher-level objects impacted by a specific element:
Right-click an element in the Explorer pane, then select Show Impacted to open the Impacted dialog box.
In this figure, Tools is the selected element. It affects one element at the highest-level. Next to each element is a description of the algorithm that was applied to determine its state.
Identify objects impacted by the element by reviewing the Impacted dialog box, which consists of three main sections:
Elements Impacted: Displays the highest-level objects affected by the state of the selected element and the application of algorithms.
Details: Traverses the element hierarchy beginning with the selected object and finishing with the top parent just below the Enterprise node. Information about the selected element displays in a shaded block.
All Parents: Displays all potential services impacted by the selected element. Because every element, including Enterprise, has a parent, at least one entry always displays in this section.
NOTE:If no objects are impacted, if the impacted objects are not accessible based on security settings, or if the parent object is Enterprise, both the Details and Elements Impacted sections display None.
Click Refresh to update the following information:
Changes in the state of the selected element and in the impacted services based on the selected element’s state
Changes in the service hierarchy definitions in which the selected element participates
Changes in the state of any element in the service hierarchy definition in which the selected element participates
Perform any of the following actions on elements displayed in the Impacted dialog box:
In the Elements Impacted section, click the [details] link next to an element.
The Details section displays the detailed hierarchy between the selected element and the highest-level element displayed in the Elements Impacted section.
Double-click an element.
The view updates to display the element’s information.
Position the cursor over an element.
Tooltip status information displays for the element.
Right-click an element, then select a menu option.
For details on these options, see Section B.0, Element and Alarm Options.
In addition to viewing the relationships between elements in the Network view, you can also view the elements that are affected by the current element (such as the Impacted view), and the elements that are affecting the current element (such as the Root Cause view).
To view impacted or root cause elements in the Network view:
Right-click the Network View drop-down list on the toolbar, and select one of the following:
Network: Shows standard default view of an element and all its relationships
Impacted: Shows the elements that are impacted by the selected element
Root Cause: Shows what elements are causing the current state of the selected element
Elements in the view are filtered based on the selection.
In some situations, you might want to exclude some Service elements from impact reporting. For example, if you use BSCM to generate automated tree views of elements that are used as building blocks for higher-level views (applications, services, and so on), the same element can display in the Show Impacted or Root Cause dialog box for multiple trees.
To exclude an element branch from impact reporting:
Right-click an element in the Services hierarchy, then select Properties to open the Status property page.
Select the Exclude from Impact Reporting check box.
Close the property page.
Click Yes when asked to save changes.