Business Rules

Administration > Service Health > Business Rules

Alternatively, click Business Rules.

The Business Rules page contains templates for available rules. These templates are implemented so that when the assignment mechanism assigns a specific HI or KPI to a discovered CI, the KPI is calculated based on the rule template in the repository. For details, see KPI Assignments.

Advanced users can modify existing rules and create new rules to customize the way the information is presented. For example, you may create new rules when integrating data from a new external system into Service Health.

You can use the Rules API to create new rules. For details, see Service Health Rules API.

Business Rules determine KPI status based on data received from other KPIs, rather than from original sample data. The received data can come from the KPIs of child CIs, or from other KPIs associated with the same CI.

The rules vary in the type of logic they use to arrive at a status result. For example:

• The rule may select a KPI status held by one of the child CIs, and apply that status to the parent, as done by the Worst Status Rule.

• The rule may aggregate the received data to calculate a measurement, and compare the measurement with defined thresholds, as done by the Sum of Values Rule.

• The rule may calculate a measurement based on the status of another KPI for the CI, and compare the measurement with defined thresholds, as done by the Real Time Impact Rule when receiving status from the Availability KPI.

Each KPI has been assigned a default business rule that is used when you attach a new KPI to a CI; the default is generally one of the group rules for that KPI. When editing a KPI or attaching a new KPI, you can select a different rule from the list of rules that are applicable for that KPI.

If a KPI is associated with a logical CI then the rule that calculates the status and value of this KPI is probably a business rule – it uses the KPIs of other CIs to calculate its own status and value (for example: Worst Status rule).

OMi does not validate new rules to check for proper logic (whether they are written in Java or using the Rules API). However, a rule calculating a value for a KPI is expected to return a result in less than one minute (by default).

An internal mechanism automatically cancels rules that run longer, and are therefore possibly invalid. If a rule is canceled repeatedly, the mechanism determines it as invalid and quarantines it, to prevent harm to the system. The quarantine process occurs as follows:

1. If a calculation rule fails to return a result for a KPI in one minute, the calculation is interrupted. The KPI’s status is No Data, and the <rule + KPI> pair is now considered suspect. (Sometimes this interruption fails and the rule continues to run; the goal of this quarantine mechanism is to prevent this resource drain. In this case the result will be No Data as well.)

2. If a <rule + KPI> pair is considered suspect twice in a 12 hour period (by default), it is quarantined for one hour, and the KPI's status is No Data.

3. If there are 10 concurrent suspect pairs that use the same rule, the rule is disabled for one week ("fully quarantined"), and the KPI's status is No Data during that time.

Both the JMX Console and OMi infrastructure settings have many options for customizing the quarantine mechanism (for example changing the default values of 720 minutes, one hour, one week); please contact HPE Support if you need further details. You can get details on quarantined rules, and take pairs and rules out of quarantine, using the JMX Console (OMi-Platform:service=MarbleWorker). For example, you can use the following methods to get information:

• getSuspectPairs gives a list of <rule + KPI> pairs that are suspect.

• getQuarantinedPairs gives a list of <rule + KPI> pairs that are quarantined.

• getFullyQuarantinedRules shows which rules are quarantined.

Quarantine logs are located in <OMi_HOME>/log/marble_supervisor/marbleWorkerQuarantine.log. They contain the following data:

• A log for each failure. For example: 2013-10-31 10:02:50,324 [Calculation-Executor-1-0] (W_RulesQuarantineManager.java:127) INFO - calculation of dimension: 3455cdbbd36041f5bd4bc0363ae79888 with rule ID 2147483647 had failed 8 times.

• A log for each quarantine operation. For example: 2013-10-31 08:54:21,443 [Calculation-Executor-1-0] (W_RulesQuarantineManager.java:706) WARN - Quarantining rule 36432 for dimension ccfbf6addec249669d37e5c87dfa7591.

• A log for each "unquarantine" operation. For example: 2013-10-31 09:55:19,320 [UnQuarantine-Timer-1] (W_RulesQuarantineManager.java:306) INFO - unQuarantining pair 2147483647/3455cdbbd36041f5bd4bc0363ae79888.

If an operation was conducted using the JMX, the log message ends with the words "using the JMX", for example: 2013-10-31 16:21:10,537 [Thread-47] (W_RulesQuarantineManager.java:794) WARN - Quarantining rule 1 for dimension 3073862e785a4da786ebed8bd2b4c022 using the JMX.

You can obtain statistics on quarantined elements using the following JMX method:

• The port for the marble supervisor JMX is: 29800

• Then choose the “MarbleWorker” service.

• The method name is: showCurrentStatistics (without any parameters).

KPIs are calculated using group rules, based on data received from other KPIs or HIs. Group rules must always contain the following rule parameters: calc_method and hi_list.

The calc_method parameter defines how the rule calculates the KPI. The parameter should be of type Integer, and it can contain values from 0-3, as follows:

• 0. The KPI is set by HIs and child KPIs; this is the default value for out-of-the-box group rules.

• 1. The KPI is set by HIs only.

• 2. The KPI is set by child KPIs.

• 3. The KPI is set by HIs; if none exist, use child KPIs.

The hi_list parameter defines which HIs are used in the KPI calculation. This parameter should be of type String. By default, this field is empty. If you enter HIs in this field, make sure you use valid HI names and separate HIs with commas.

Note that the parameter names are case-sensitive.

1. In the Business Rules pane, perform one of the following actions:

   • To create a new rule, click New. The New Business Rule panel opens.

   • To duplicate an existing rule, select a rule and click  Duplicate. The new rule will be initially labeled Copy of <rule name> and you must rename it. The original rule is still available, and the new duplicated rule can be modified.

   • To modify an existing rule, select the rule and click Edit. Alternatively, you can click Edit in the right pane where the business rule's details are displayed.

2. Define a new rule or modify an existing one as follows:

   • In the General section, define general rule information: the display name and a description (optional).

   • In the Type section, define the purpose of the business rule and how it should be implemented.

     You can decide between the KPI and Sibling purposes. Depending on your choice, the business rule either calculates only the status of the KPI to which it is assigned, or the rule includes the KPI siblings.

     The rule can be implemented either with a Java class or with a Groovy script.

   • In the Parameters sections, modify rule parameters. You can modify the existing information or enter new information about the parameters for a specific rule:

     • To add a new parameter, click New Parameter.

       Enter a unique name and select the type. Optionally, select whether the parameter is configurable, enter a default value, and the unit.
       If a parameter is configurable, it is displayed in the KPI Assignments and CI Customizations UIs.

       Click Apply to apply the values or Discard to discard the changes.

     • To modify an existing parameter, select the parameter and click Edit.
     • To delete an existing parameter, select the parameter and click Delete.

     All calculation rule parameters are used to define input for the rule. The values used for the parameters can be fixed values (defined within the parameter definition) or referenced values taken from the samples.

   • Optionally, in the Threshold section, modify the thresholds.

     Select Calculate severity based on predefined thresholds to enable editing the thresholds.

     Select the operator and set the threshold values by using the + and – buttons, or by entering the values directly.

     Note If you are creating a customized Generic Sample rule, a Generic Sum of Values Over Time rule, or a Generic Two Arguments rule, and the name of the time stamp field in the sample is not time_stamp, in the Parameters section, select the Time Stamp Field parameter and click Edit. In the Default Value field, enter the name of the sample's time stamp field. The type of the sample's time stamp field must be time.

   • In the Other section, enter the tooltip descriptions and the units. By default, no rule units are set.

     Each indicator on a CI has a tooltip which displays additional information when you hover over the indicator. The rule repository contains the default tooltips created by each of the calculation rules. Tooltips are assigned to CIs according to the rule used for the indicator. Each tooltip includes parameters which correspond to the type of information displayed in the tooltip.

     Units (like % or $) are appended to the calculated value. They do not influence how the KPI status is calculated.

3. Click Create to create a new rule or Save to save a modified rule. The details of the created or updated business rule are displayed in the Business Rules pane.

If you have modified a predefined rule (for example if you changed the applicable CI types), you might want to return the rule and its parameters to their defaults.

Note that this is only applicable for rules whose origin is Predefined (customized).

1. Within the central Business Rules pane, select a predefined (customized) rule, and click Revert .

2. The rule to be reverted is highlighted. Click Yes to revert the rule to default.

OMi calculations do not support cycles in the Impact model; cycles are broken randomly, and calculation results do not include CIs in the cycle or their parent CIs.

In order to verify whether you have cycles in your model, access the JMX Console: https://<Data Processing Server>:29800/ > Calculation Adapter > getCyclicLinks.