Outages

An outage is a temporary loss of service of a Configuration Item. It can be the result of planned maintenance or operational failure.

Outage classes

Outages fall into different classifications:

• Planned (and approved) outages
• Degraded service
  • Partial loss of service
  • Slow response time
  • Intermittent interruptions
• Total loss of service

Availability criteria should specify what the maximum outage threshold is on a monthly basis. For example, you can choose a metric based on the required percentage of up time, or the maximum time allowed for an outage, when you define an availability Service Level Target.

Planned outages

A planned outage is usually the result of a routine maintenance schedule, upgrade action, or faulty equipment replacement. Incidents, change requests, and change tasks can generate outage records. The change request and task records show scheduled downtime. Incident, change request, and change task records have a checkbox to specify if the Configuration Item is out of service.

Calculating outage costs

When an outage occurs and the associated CI has an SLT, the outage costs to the business are calculated and stored in the outagedetail records. You can configure the default Outage Cost per Hour in the Configuration Management Environment record. The default Outage Cost per Hour is only applied if you do not specify Outage Cost per Hour in the CI form.

Automatic outage posting

When you enable Service Level Management to integrate SLA information with other applications, you can configure automatic outage posting to ensure that Service Level Management automatically records when an outage begins and when it ends for the affected Configuration Item.

When you configure an application integration record in the slamodulecontrol table, complete the Service Target Information section to capture outage data. To configure application integration, click Service Level Management > Administration > Configure Application and then search for the appropriate record.

If you omit automatic outage posting, Service Manager displays the outage start and end times and requests confirmation when you close the application record.

Outage spreading

Although a Service Level Target describes a single Configuration Item (CI), the availability of one CI may also affect the availability of other CIs. For example, if a web server has an outage, the corporate web site also experiences an outage, even though it has no defects. Outage spreading captures data about the related CIs affected by an outage.

An slamodulecontrol application integration record has two settings to configure outage spreading. Select Spread Outages to enable outage spreading. When you choose this setting, Service Level Management displays the Extend outage spreading to more than one level? checkbox.

Outage posting in other applications

Service Level Management tracks Configuration Item outages related to incidents, changes, and change tasks. There are two ways to post the outage information:

• If you select Auto Post Outage Information in the slamodulecontrol record for an application, Service Level Management automatically uses the time when you open the incident as the outage start and the time when you close the incident as the outage end time.
• If you do not select Auto Post Outage Information in the slamodulecontrol record for the probsummary file, Service Level Management displays an Outage Confirmation dialog box when you close the record. The open and close time for the incident is the default start and end time for the outage. You can change the outage start time or the outage end time before you close the record.

Example: Configure and verify planned outages

A planned outage is usually the result of a routine maintenance schedule, upgrade action, or faulty equipment replacement. Incidents, change requests, and change tasks can generate outage records. The change request and task records show scheduled downtime. Incident, change request, and change task records have a checkbox to specify if the Configuration Item is out of service. The following example shows an interaction record that is escalated to an incident record. Once the Service Level Agreement application is enabled and configured to spread outages, the System Down field is checked for the down Configuration Items (CIs). The incident record contains the outage details with outage start and end times.

• For information on ensuring the background processes are running, see the related topics.
• For information on enabling the Service Level Management application, see the related topics.

At the end of this example, you will be able to:

• Configure the Service Level Management application (Task 1)
• Set the outage dependency counters in Configuration Management (Task 2)
• Create an interaction record and escalate it to an incident record (Tasks 3 and 4)
• Verify planned outages, including showing that the Configuration Items (CIs) are down (Tasks 5 and 6)

Task 1: Configure the Service Level Management application

1. Log on as a System Administrator.

2. Click Service Level Management  > Administration > Configure Application.

   The SLM Integration Information record opens.

3. In the Table Name field, type probsummary, and then click Search.

   The SLM module control form for probsummary opens.

4. Go to the Service Target Information section of the form.
5. Select the following options:
   • Spread Outages
   • Extend outage spreading to more than one level?
6. Click Save.
7. Click OK.

Task 2: Set the outage dependency counters in Configuration Item (CI) relationships

Set the outage dependency counter for:

• adv-nam-switch
• adv-nam-router
• adv-nam-modem

1. Click Configuration Management > Resources > Configuration Item Relationships.
2. Click Search.
3. Select the adv-nam-switch CI relationship to set the outage dependency.
   1. Go to the Outage Dependency section of the form.
   2. Select the Outage Dependency option.
   3. Set the counter to 3 for This Configuration Item will be considered down if ___ or more of the supporting configuration items are down.
   4. Click Save.
   5. Click OK.
4. Click Search.
5. Select the adv-nam-router CI relationship to set the outage dependency.
   1. Go to the Outage Dependency section of the form.
   2. Select the Outage Dependency option.
   3. Set the counter to 1 for This Configuration Item will be considered down if ___ or more of the supporting configuration items are down.
   4. Click Save.
   5. Click OK.
6. Click Search.
7. Select the adv-nam-modem CI relationship to set the outage dependency.
   1. Go to the Outage Dependency section of the form.
   2. Select the Outage Dependency option.
   3. Set the counter to 1 for This Configuration Item will be considered down if ___ or more of the supporting configuration items are down.
   4. Click Save.
   5. Click OK.
8. Verify that the System Down field is unchecked in the adv-nam-modem CI record.
   1. Click Configuration Management > Resources > CI Queue.
   2. Click Search.
   3. Type adv-nam-modem in the Display Name field of the search form, and then click Search.
   4. Verify the System Down option is unchecked.
   5. Click Save.
   6. Click OK.
9. Log off Service Manager, and then log back on to Service Manager, for the changes to take effect.

Task 3: Create an interaction and incident for CI adv-nam-switch-hr

1. Log on as a self-service user and submit an interaction request.
2. Log on as a Service Desk Agent and bring up the interaction request submitted by the self-service user.
3. Click Service Desk > Interaction Queue.

4. On the To Do queue, select the following:

   • Interactions in the Queue field
   • Self-Service Interactions in the View field
5. Fill in the following information:
   

   Field	Value
   Assignment Group	Network
   Service	Intranet/Internet (North America)
   Manually enter CI	adv-nam-switch-hr
   Category	Incident
   Area	Hardware
   Subarea	Hardware failure
   Impact	1

6. Click Escalate.
7. On the Escalation Details screen, do the following:
   1. Select advantage/Africa in the Location field.
   2. Fill in the rest of the required fields.

   3. Click Submit.

      An Incident record is opened.

      Note If there is already an incident record related to this CI, click Create New Incident.

8. Log out of Service Manager.

Task 4: Create a separate interaction and incident for CI adv-nam-switch-mar.

1. Log on as a self-service user to submit an interaction request.
2. Log on as a Service Desk Agent and bring up the interaction request submitted by the self-service user.
3. Click Service Desk > Interaction Queue.
4. On the To Do queue, select the following:
   • Interactions in the Queue field
   • Self-Service Interactions in the View field
5. Fill in the following information:
   

   Field	Value
   Assignment Group	Network
   Service	Intranet/Internet (North America)
   Manually enter CI	adv-nam-switch-mar
   Category	Incident
   Area	Hardware
   Subarea	Hardware failure
   Impact	1

6. Click Escalate.
7. On the Escalation Details screen, do the following:
   1. Select advantage/Africa in the Location field.
   2. Fill in the rest of the required fields.

   3. Click Submit.

      An Incident record is opened.

      Note If there is already an incident record related to this CI, click Create New Incident.

8. Log out of Service Manager.

Task 5: Verify "System Down" is checked for CIs selected on incidents opened earlier.

1. Log on as a System Administrator.
2. Click Configuration Management > Resources > Search CIs.
3. Type adv-nam-modem in the Display Name field, and then click Search.
4. Select the CIs selected on the records opened previously, as well as the CIs "adv-nam-switch," "adv-nam-router," and "adv-nam-modem". These CIs appear in red.
5. Verify that each of the CIs has the "System Down" checkbox selected.
6. Click Cancel and Back until you get back to the main menu.

Task 6: See outage details with confirmation for the outage start and end times

1. Log on as a System Administrator.
2. Click Incident Management > Search Incidents.

3. Type an incident record ID number in the Incident ID field, and then click Search.

   The incident record opens.

4. Click Fill in the Closure Code field to select an applicable closure code.
5. Type a solution in the Solution field.
6. Click Close Incident.

7. In the Confirm Outage Information form, update or accept the specified outage start and end times, and then click OK.

   The status of the incident record is updated to Closed.

8. Click OK.