176782_CMDB7.6.04_UsersGuide

www.bmc.com

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04

User’s Guide

January 2011

If you have comments or suggestions about this documentation, contact Information Design and Development by email at [email protected].

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Support by telephone or email

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■ In the United States and Canada, call 800 537 1813. Outside the United States and Canada, contact your local support center for assistance.

■ Submit a new issue at http://www.bmc.com/support.



Contents

BMC Atrium Core documentation 7

Chapter 1 Accessing BMC Atrium CMDB 11

BMC Atrium CMDB architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12BMC Atrium Core Console interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

BMC Atrium Core Console toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Opening the BMC Atrium Core Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15BMC Atrium Core Console applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Opening applications in the BMC Atrium Core Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Atrium Explorer interface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Atrium Explorer toolbar and user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Views of the dataset in the display pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Display pane actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26CI actions you can perform in the display pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Navigation pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32Configuring instance display options in Atrium Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Chapter 2 Finding BMC Atrium CMDB data 35

Viewing data in Atrium Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Find tab interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Find tab toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Finding instances using a saved query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Query structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Relational-algebra formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44Queries with parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Shared and personal queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46Viewing federated data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46Using the Query Builder to create a new query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Creating a simple query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Creating an advanced query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Creating queries with folding rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Editing a query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Copying a query. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Configuring query options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Using BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Remedy AR System class forms

to find instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Contents 5

Chapter 3 Working with instances 73

Working with related CIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Working with CIs and relationships in a popup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Viewing filtered CIs that are part of a virtual relationship in a popup . . . . . . . . . 76Instance groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Saving a view as an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Working with layout controls to view CIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Using the Sandbox view and dataset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Promoting changes to CIs to the BMC Asset dataset from the Sandbox . . . . . . . . 88Creating instances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Creating relationships between CIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91Editing instances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96Deleting instances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98Promoting instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Identifying instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Comparing CI and relationship instances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Viewing instance history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Chapter 4 Simulating the impact of changes to CIs 107

Atrium Impact Simulator example (with Calbro Services) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Using Atrium Impact Simulator with and without

BMC Service Impact Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Using Atrium Impact Simulator with BMC SIM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Using Atrium Impact Simulator without BMC SIM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Impact states in Atrium Impact Simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109Atrium Impact Simulator interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

CIs to include in a simulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111Simulation results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111Related change requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Running an impact simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113Viewing CI impact from other BMC applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115Loading a saved impact simulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115Comparing impact simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Running a report of simulation results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Running a quick impact simulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118Opening a related change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Index 121

6 User’s Guide

BMC Atrium Core documentation

This section describes the complete set of BMC Atrium Core documentation, including manuals, help systems, videos, and so on.

Unless otherwise noted, documentation is available free of charge on the BMC Atrium Core documentation media (DVD or Electronic Product Download bundle) and on the BMC Customer Support site, at http://www.bmc.com/support.

To find this documentation on the BMC Customer Support site, choose Product Documentation > Supported Product A-Z List > BMC Atrium CMDB Enterprise Manager >7.6.04

Title Description Audience

Atrium Integrator 7.6.04 User's Guide

Information about defining source and target connections, creating jobs and transformations, editing and monitoring jobs, and other Atrium Integrator concepts.

Users who are responsible for setting up data transfer integrations between external data stores and BMC Atrium CMDB.

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide

Information about setting permissions, configuring federation, modifying the data model, configuring an impact model, and other administrative tasks in BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (BMC Atrium CMDB).

Configuration managers, application administrators, and asset analysts.

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Common Data Model Diagram

Hierarchical diagram of all classes in the Common Data Model (CDM), including unique attributes and applicable relationships.


BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help

Description and details of superclasses, subclasses, attributes, and relationship classes for each class. Contains only information about the CDM at first, but you can update it to include information about data model extensions that you install.

Note: This Help is provided in HTML and is available on the BMC Atrium Core media. It is not available on the BMC Customer Support site.


BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Modeling Guide

Best practices for using the classes that BMC provides for BMC Atrium CMDB (both the CDM and extensions) to model complex business entities, focusing on the use of multiple related CIs to model an entity rather than on general information about a class or attribute.





BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Javadoc Help

Information about Oracle Java classes, methods, and variables that integrate with BMC Atrium CMDB.


Application programmers.

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide

Information about normalizing data in BMC Atrium CMDB and reconciling CIs from different data providers into a single production dataset.


BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Online Help

Help for using and configuring BMC Atrium CMDB, including Atrium Integrator, BMC Atrium Product Catalog, Reconciliation Engine, Normalization Engine, and so on.

Note: This Help is provided in HTML and is available through the Help links in the BMC Atrium CMDB user interface. It is not available on the BMC Customer Support site.

Configuration managers, application administrators, asset analysts, and users that work with CIs and need to understand the relationships that exist within BMC Atrium CMDB.

BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 User's Guide

Information about using BMC Atrium CMDB, including searching for and comparing CIs and relationships, relating CIs, viewing history, running impact simulations, and viewing federated data.

Users that work with CIs and need to understand the relationships that exist within BMC Atrium CMDB.

BMC Atrium Core: Taking Your Data Into Production End to End

End-to-end high-level steps for bringing data into BMC Atrium CMDB from a third-party source and making it available in your production dataset.

Note: This Flash video is available on the BMC Atrium Core media. It is not available on the BMC Customer Support site.


BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Compatibility Matrix

Information about the BMC Atrium Core configurations that are expected to work together based on design, testing, or general understanding of the interaction between products.

Note: Download the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Compatibility Matrix from the BMC Customer Support site at http://www.bmc.com/support/reg/remedy-compatibility-tables.html?c=n.


BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Concepts and Planning Guide

Information about CMDB concepts and high-level steps for planning and implementing BMC Atrium Core.

Anyone who wants to learn about and understand BMC Atrium Core products, CMDBs in general, and the functionality of BMC Atrium CMDB in particular.IT leaders, configuration managers, application administrators, and asset analysts are some who will benefit from this information.


8 User’s Guide

http://www.bmc.com/support/reg/remedy-compatibility-tables.html?c=n

http://www.bmc.com/support/reg/remedy-compatibility-tables.html?c=n

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Developer’s Reference Guide

Information about creating API programs using C API functions and data structures.

Application administrators and programmers.

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Installation Guide

Information about installing, upgrading, and uninstalling BMC Atrium Core features.

Application administrators.

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Master Index

Combined index of all guides. Everyone.

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Product Catalog and DML Guide

Information about configuring the Product Catalog and DML, adding products, and creating aliases for products, manufacturers, and categorizations.

System administrators, IT managers, network managers, and other qualified personnel who are familiar with their computing and networking environment.

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Release Notes

Information about new features, known issues, and other late-breaking topics.

Everyone.

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Troubleshooting Guide

Information about resolving issues with BMC Atrium Core components, including API, filter, and console error messages and their solutions.

Application administrators, programmers, and BMC Support personnel.

BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Web Services Help

Information about using BMC Atrium Core Web Services, including how to publish and find interfaces in the Web Services Registry, set versions, disambiguate web services, configure security policies and encryption, and use BMC Atrium Core Web Services data structures and operations.


Application administrators and programmers.

BMC Atrium Integration Engine 7.6.04 ADK Developer's Guide

Information about how to build adapters that can transfer information between an external data store and either BMC Remedy AR System forms or BMC Atrium CMDB.

Developers who have a basic understanding of BMC Atrium Integration Engine and want to build adapters that can exchange data between two data sources.

BMC Atrium Integration Engine 7.6.04 Online Help

Help for using and configuring BMC Atrium Integration Engine.

Note: This Help is provided in HTML and is available through the Help links in the BMC Atrium Integration Engine user interface. It is not available on the BMC Customer Support site.

Users who are responsible for setting up data transfer integrations between external data stores and either BMC Atrium CMDB or BMC Remedy AR System.




BMC Atrium Integration Engine 7.6.04 User's Guide

Information about creating data exchanges and data mappings, defining rules and queries, activating event-driven data exchanges, defining connection settings, and other BMC Atrium Integration Engine concepts.

Users who are responsible for setting up data transfer integrations between external data stores and either BMC Atrium CMDB or BMC Remedy AR System.

Mapping Your Data to BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Classes

Spreadsheet that maps common IT objects to the appropriate class, whether part of the CDM or an extension. This spreadsheet also includes information about further categorizing instances using key attributes, and best practices for creating normalized relationships.



10 User’s Guide

Chapter

1
Accessing BMC Atrium CMDB
This section provides a brief overview of the BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) product, and describes how to access BMC Atrium CMDB functionality.

The following topics are provided:BMC Atrium CMDB architecture (page 12)BMC Atrium Core Console interface (page 13)Atrium Explorer interface (page 19)



BMC Atrium CMDB architectureBMC Atrium CMDB provides the features that you need to implement a configuration management database (CMDB) in your environment. Any application that is integrated with BMC Atrium CMDB—for example, a data provider like BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping or a data consumer like BMC Remedy Asset Management—can access the data from a centralized database.

Figure 1-1 illustrates the BMC Atrium CMDB architecture.

Figure 1-1: BMC Atrium CMDB architecture

The data inside BMC Atrium CMDB consists of configuration items (CIs) and the relationships among them. A CI is a physical, logical, or conceptual entity that is part of your environment and has configurable attributes.

Each CI or relationship is stored in a particular dataset within BMC Atrium CMDB. Data from each source or discovery tool is organized into datasets, which are then reconciled so that one production dataset represents your environment. A dataset can store data from a particular provider (as shown in Figure 1-1), a snapshot of data at a particular time, or any other set you want to create. The Sandbox dataset is an overlay dataset for the BMC Asset dataset that allows you to make changes in a separate partition without changing the production data and without duplicating the entire dataset. The Sandbox functions as a control mechanism so that BMC Atrium CMDB is not overloaded with unintended data when multiple sources update the BMC Atrium CMDB.

BMC Atrium Core

BMC Atrium CMDB

BMC BladeLogic Client Automation

BMC Atrium Discovery andDependency Mapping

Atrium IntegratorR

eco

nci

liatio

n

Engin

e

BMC AtriumProduct Catalog

Nor

mal

izat

ion

Eng

ine

Other data providers Import datasets

BMC RemedyAsset Mgmt

Federated data

OtherConsumers

Sandbox dataset

Production dataset

BMC AtriumIntegration Engine

12 User’s Guide

BMC Atrium Core Console interface

The Normalization Engine makes sure that data from different data providers is consistent in BMC Atrium CMDB. After data is normalized, it can be reconciled and saved to the BMC Atrium CMDB production dataset.

The Reconciliation Engine identifies instances in multiple datasets that represent the same real-life CI or relationship, and then merges them into a single instance in a target dataset, taking attributes from each based on precedence values that you specify. You use the consolidated production dataset as the single source of reference for your IT environment. The main goal of the Reconciliation Engine is the creation of a production dataset that contains accurate data from all available sources. Data in the production dataset can be used by consuming applications, such as BMC Remedy Asset Management.

The BMC Atrium Core Console is the primary user interface for the BMC Atrium CMDB. It is your single point of access to the BMC Atrium CMDB and all its related components and applications.

BMC Atrium Core Console interfaceThe BMC Atrium Core Console serves as a central location where you can access BMC Atrium applications, such as the Atrium Explorer, Normalization console, Reconciliation console, and Federation Manager.

Figure 1-2: BMC Atrium Core Console

Depending on your permissions, you might be able to view only specific BMC Atrium applications.



BMC Atrium Core Console toolbarThe BMC Atrium Core Console toolbar contains links to perform functions, such as opening the BMC Atrium CMDB Online Help and viewing the version information for the product.

Figure 1-3: BMC Atrium Core Console toolbar

Use the BMC Atrium Core Console toolbar to access the BMC Atrium CMDB Online Help, close a BMC Atrium CMDB application, log out of the BMC Atrium Core Console, and view the version of BMC Atrium Core that you have currently installed. Table 1-1 describes the buttons on the toolbar.Table 1-1: Atrium Core Console toolbar buttons

Button or menu Description

Help Launches the BMC Atrium CMDB Online Help. About Displays the copyright, version number, and build number

information for the BMC Atrium Core Console. The product version appears in the following format:V + R + MM +PPP (if you installed a patch), where

V=The Atrium Core version, for example, 7.6.04.R=ReleaseMM=Maintenance numberPPP=Patch number

The product build information appears in the following format:YYMMDD-HHMMSS, where

YYMMDD—The year, month, and date on which the build was created.HHMMSS—The exact time of the build in hours, minutes, and seconds.

Note: The alphabet ‘L’ appears in front of the build information if you applied a hotfix, for example, BUILD L100413-175203.

Close Closes the application that you have launched in the BMC Atrium Core Console. If you have launched several applications, the BMC Atrium Core Console closes the one that is currently highlighted. To close the BMC Atrium Core Console, make sure you close all other open applications first and then click Close again.

Logout Logs you out of the BMC Atrium CMDB application.

14 User’s Guide


Opening the BMC Atrium Core ConsoleYou can access the BMC Atrium Core Console through a browser.

To access the BMC Atrium Core Console

1 In a browser, enter the URL designated by an administrator. For example:

http://midTier:port/arsys

midTier is the name of the web server where the BMC Remedy Mid Tier is installed.port is the port number of the web server where the BMC Remedy Mid Tier is installed, which is required only if the web server is not using the default port (80 if using Microsoft IIS or 8080 if using Apache Tomcat).

2 In the login page, specify the following details:

In the User Name field, type your user name.

In the Password field, type your password.

In the Authentication field, type the authentication string (if one was provided by an administrator)

3 Click Login.

4 In the AR System Home page, choose BMC Atrium Core > Atrium Core Console.

If you access multiple servers from the AR System Home page, you would choose BMC Atrium Core > serverName > Atrium Core Console.

Figure 1-4: Opening BMC Atrium Core Console from the AR System Home page

A bar at the top of the BMC Atrium Core Console displays the name of the current user. The Application Launcher bar appears on the left side of the console. Use this bar to open applications such as Atrium Explorer.



BMC Atrium Core Console applicationsTable 1-2 lists the applications that you can open in the BMC Atrium Core Console. Every application that you open in BMC Atrium Core Console contains its own tab, which enables you to switch between applications in the same browser window.

Each application also contains its own navigation functions and buttons as well as other options that enable you to adjust the viewing area of the application.

Table 1-2: BMC Atrium Core Console applications

Application Description

Class Manager View and modify the classes in the data model. Only users with the CMDB Definitions Admin role can access this application. For more information about Class Manager, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Explorer View information about the CIs and relationships in BMC Atrium CMDB in a graphical layout. For more information about Atrium Explorer, see “Working with related CIs” on page 74.

Normalization Configure and monitor the normalization engine. The normalization engine makes sure that product names and categorization are consistent across different datasets and from different data providers. For more information about normalization, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

Reconciliation Configure, troubleshoot, and monitor the reconciliation engine. The reconciliation engine reconciles CI and relationship data from multiple datasets into a single instance in the production dataset. Only users with the CMDB RE User, CMDB RE Manual Identification, or CMDB RE Definitions Admin role can access this application. For more information about reconciliation, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

Service Catalog Define a common list of services; map business services to supporting services; rationalize data across IT processes based on a business context; and provide a service-oriented approach to enable management reporting. For more information about the Service Catalog, see the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Concepts and Planning Guide.

Federation Manager Configure how to access to federated data, which is stored outside BMC Atrium CMDB, and link that data to CIs in the BMC Atrium CMDB. For more information about Federation Manager, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

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Opening applications in the BMC Atrium Core ConsoleUse the following steps to open applications in the BMC Atrium Core Console.

To open an application in the BMC Atrium Core Console

1 Open the BMC Atrium Core Console, as described in “BMC Atrium Core Console interface” on page 13.

The BMC Atrium Core Console opens, displaying the applications that you can open.

2 Click Application Launcher in the upper left corner at any time to open or close the list of available applications.

Impact Simulator Determine the impact a change to a CI will have on other CIs. For example, you might run a simulation in Atrium Impact Simulator to learn what devices and applications in the network will be impacted if you were to take a server offline. For more information about Atrium Impact Simulator, see “Simulating the impact of changes to CIs” on page 107.

Product Catalog View and create product entries, set up product categorization, and approve products for membership in your Definitive Media Library (DML) and Definitive Hardware Library (DHL). For more information about the Product Catalog, see the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Product Catalog and DML Guide.

AIE (Application Launcher > Integration Engines)

Use BMC Atrium Integration Engine only for existing data exchanges between external data stores and BMC Atrium CMDB, or between external data stores and BMC Remedy AR System (AR System) applications and forms. For more information about BMC Atrium Integration Engine, see the BMC Atrium Integration Engine 7.6.04 User's Guide.

For creating new data transfers between external data stores and BMC Atrium CMDB, use Atrium Integrator, as described in the Atrium Integrator 7.6.04 User's Guide.

Atrium Integrator (Application Launcher > Integration Engines)

Use Atrium Integrator for new data transfers between external data stores and BMC Atrium CMDB. For more information about Atrium Integrator, see the Atrium Integrator 7.6.04 User's Guide.

Table 1-2: BMC Atrium Core Console applications (Continued)

Application Description



NOTE To improve client performance, the Adobe Flash Player prompts you to cache up to 1MB of data when you first open the BMC Atrium Core Console. Do not confuse the Adobe Flash Player cache with your browser cache.

Figure 1-5: Adobe Flash Player Settings

3 Click Allow to store the cache information on your computer.

If you click Deny, the cache is not used and you will not be prompted again when you log in. If you change your mind and later want to modify the cache settings, you must adjust the settings by performing the following actions:

a Right-click inside the display pane and then select Settings.

Figure 1-6: Adobe Flash Player Settings dialog box

b In the Adobe Flash Player Settings dialog box, move the slider to the far left to allow 0KB of local storage.

c At the prompt that all information will be removed, click OK.

d When you return to the Adobe Flash Player Settings dialog box, click Close. The next time that you log in and open the BMC Atrium Core Console, the system will prompt you to store the cache on your computer.

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Atrium Explorer interface

4 Pause your mouse pointer on either the Applications or Atrium Tools icon.

5 Click the icon of the application that you want to open.

Atrium Explorer interfaceUse the Atrium Explorer to manage the CI and relationship instances in BMC Atrium CMDB. The Atrium Explorer is divided into three panes: the toolbar, display pane, and navigation pane.

Figure 1-7: Atrium Explorer layout

ToolbarNavigation pane

Display pane



Atrium Explorer toolbar and user interfaceUse the Atrium Explorer toolbar and user interface to change the layout and view of the instances in the display pane, create new views, and run filters. Table 1-3 describes the buttons and menus on the toolbar.

Table 1-3: Atrium Explorer toolbar controls


New View Opens an empty view of the dataset in the display pane. See “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77 for more information.If you have multiple datasets in BMC Atrium CMDB, use the attached list to select a dataset for the new view.

Refresh View Updates the display of the current view to reflect any changes that you have made, and makes sure that the view has been synchronized with BMC Atrium CMDB.

Save View Saves the view currently open in the display pane. See “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77 for more information.

Export View as Image Enables you to save the current view as a png image. See “Saving a view as an image” on page 79 for more information.

Print View Prints the current view. Consider using the Layout controls to optimize how instances are displayed before printing the view.

Map IT Resources Maps a query to any CI for dynamic modelling to automate the maintenance of service models supporting that CI. You can associate a query with a technical or business service and dynamically update the CIs that are related to the service.For more information about creating dynamic service models, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Options Enables you to change the options for displaying instances. For more information, see “Configuring instance display options in Atrium Explorer” on page 33.

Open Launch in Context Menu Opens any Launch-method federated links for the selected instance. For example, if the BMC Remedy IT Service Management applications are installed on your system, this menu provides links to federated change requests or incidents related to the instance. See “Viewing federated data” on page 46 for more information.

Display Provides options for displaying instances:Topology View—Shows instances graphically, with lines to illustrate relationships between CIs.Table View—Lists instances as rows in a table.

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Views of the dataset in the display paneThe Atrium Explorer displays BMC Atrium CMDB CI and relationship instances as a graphical map inside of a particular view. Think of a view in Atrium Explorer as a “window” into a particular dataset. A view lets you display a subset of CIs from your dataset. Based on the dataset that you select in your query options, you can perform various actions on the CIs within that view (for example, modify or delete). After you have populated a view with CIs and then saved it, you can reopen that view to work with those CIs.

Create Relationship Mode button and Relationship Type menu

Toggles the ability to add relationships between CIs in the current view. See “Creating relationships between CIs” on page 91 for more information.The display pane must be visible as a topology, and not as a a table, to create relationships.

Note: You cannot create relationships in the BMC Asset dataset.Manage Filters Displays Filters dialog box. You can create, copy, edit, or delete

filters that restrict the instances shown in the current view. See “Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed” on page 80 for more information.

Promote Sandbox Changes Runs the Atrium Explorer Identification and Merge reconciliation job to promote changes in the Sandbox dataset to the Asset dataset. The Promote Sandbox Changes button works only with the Sandbox dataset. For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.To promote CIs in the BMC Sample dataset, run the BMC Sample Dataset Identification and Merge job from the Reconciliation console. To promote CIs from any other dataset, create your own reconciliation job. For more information, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

Layout controls From the topology view, applies any of the following layout controls to the instances in the display pane:

Choose filter—Applies a filter that limits the instances that are visible in the current view or in a popup. See “Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed” on page 80 for more information.Layered—Specifies the layout style of the view (for example, Hierarchic). See “Working with layout controls to view CIs” on page 82 for more options.Top to Bottom—Specifies the direction of the instances in the display pane. You apply it to the layout style.

Run Layout button If you have added new CIs to a view, click Run Layout in the view to reorganize the view according to the selected layout.

Table 1-3: Atrium Explorer toolbar controls (Continued)




To view the CIs in the dataset, you can drag one or more instances from the Find section of the navigation pane to the display pane. When you drag a CI instance to the display pane, you show the CI in a particular view. A message appears that indicates the result of dragging the instance or the reason why the drag operation was rejected. You can also click a CI and select Expand Children or Expand Parents to see associated CIs in the display pane.

For more information about working with instances in the display pane, see:

“Finding instances using a saved query” on page 40

“Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48

“Creating queries with folding rules” on page 60

“Working with instances” on page 73

Figure 1-8 shows a topology of related instances in the display pane of Atrium Explorer.

Figure 1-8: Topology of related instances in Atrium Explorer

All instances visible in the display pane are represented as a view of a specific dataset. You can have several views opened at once, though only one at a time is active. After you have opened a view, its name is listed at the bottom of the display pane (for example, View - BMC Asset or View1 - Sandbox for John). Click the names at the bottom of the display pane to switch between views as you work. For more information, see “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77.

Use the zoom bar to resize the topology in the display pane for easier viewing.

Most icons represent CIs

Lines represent relationships

Circle icon represents a group of federated instances

List of views

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The Zoom Out button makes the topology appear smaller, and the Zoom In button makes the topology appear larger. You can also resize the topology by dragging the slider between these two buttons, or by using the scroll wheel on the mouse.

The Zoom Fit button resizes the topology so that all CIs and relationships fit in the viewable area of the display pane.

The Show Overview button is a navigation aid. You can click and drag the highlight box to select an area of the graph that you are interested in and the large graph will pan and zoom to display the portion you have highlighted.

Figure 1-9 shows the zoom bar and its buttons.

Figure 1-9: Zoom bar in Atrium Explorer

CIsEach CI is represented by an icon that indicates the class of that instance. Each icon includes arrows that show other CIs related to that instance. Click the icon and choose to either expand (show) or collapse (hide) related CIs.

If a CI’s isVirtual attribute is assigned the Yes value, the CI's icon is enclosed in a brown rectangle, which enables you to quickly identify CIs running as virtual machines. Figure 1-10 shows a virtual computer with a brown rectangle.

Figure 1-10: Virtual computer in Atrium Explorer

Zoom FitZoom In

Show Overview

Zoom Out



The label below each CI icon identifies that CI. The text of the label is the value of an attribute of the CI class. By default, Atrium Explorer uses the Name or ShortDescription attribute of that CI, depending on its CI class, as listed in Table 1-4. CIs that represent logical resources use the Name attribute. CIs that tend to have long, encoded names use the ShortDescription attribute.

NOTE For CIs of classes that are not listed in Table 1-4, Atrium Explorer uses the CI’s ShortDescription attribute to identify the CIs.

A subclass uses the CI label settings of its superclass. For example, because the BMC_System class uses the ShortDescription attribute for CI labels, the BMC_ComputerSystem class also uses the ShortDescription attribute. You can configure different attributes to use for CI labels of a class. For more information about changing the attributes that are used for CI labels, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Instance icons can include a small graphic that indicates its status. While you make changes in a personal Sandbox dataset, the Edited, Deleted, New, and Virtual icons indicate the changes to each instance of a CI class or a Relationship class in relationship to the BMC Asset dataset. These icons enable you to keep track of the changes you have made before promoting those changes to the production dataset. See “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85 for more information. The Deleted icon is available in all dataset views to indicate instances that are marked for deletion. The Virtual icon is available in all dataset views to indicate virtual instances. Table 1-5 describes the status icons for different types of CIs or relationships.

Table 1-4: Classes that use Name and ShortDescription attributes for CI labels

Classes with a Name attribute label Classes with a ShortDescription attribute label

BMC_CollectionBMC_DocumentBMC_LogicalEntityBMC_Person

BMC_AccessPointBMC_EquipmentBMC_SettingsBMC_SystemBMC_SystemComponentBMC_SystemService

Table 1-5: Status icons for CIs or relationships

Icon Description

The CI has been edited in the Sandbox dataset. A corresponding copy of the CI exists in the BMC Asset dataset. The CI has been deleted from the dataset.

The CI is new in the Sandbox dataset. No corresponding copy of the CI exists yet in the BMC Asset dataset. The purple icon and arrow indicate the impact relationship and its direction. For more information about impact relationships, see “Impact states in Atrium Impact Simulator” on page 109 and the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

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RelationshipsThe lines connecting CIs represent the different types of relationships. Table 1-6 lists and describes the types of relationships that are available in Atrium Explorer at installation, and the default lines that represent them in the display pane.

The CI is a virtual CI in the dataset.

None If the CI is being viewed in BMC Asset, the status of CI is unchanged. If the CI is being viewed in the Sandbox, the CI exists only in the Sandbox view but not in the Sandbox dataset. A corresponding copy of the CI exists in the BMC Asset dataset.

Table 1-6: Relationship lines in Atrium Explorer (Sheet 1 of 2)

Relationship type Default line Description

Member of Collection Solid black The destination CI is a member of a collection related to the source CI. For more information about member-of-collection relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

Partial group Relationship

Dotted red Connects a CI to a group of related CIs, where the group is incomplete. For example, if browsing CIs in a view causes a CI to be connected to two separate groups of CIs, when those groups would ordinarily be in the same group, the partial group line is used. See “Instance groups” on page 77 for more information.

Element Location Solid blue The destination class is located in a place defined by the source CI. For more information about location relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

Group Relationship Dashed grey Connect a CI to a group of related CIs. See “Instance groups” on page 77 for more information.

Virtual Relationship Dashed red Connects a CI to another CI, but the relationship is indirect because a filter or folding action has removed an intermediate CI from the view. For example, CI-1 is related to CI-2, and CI-2 is related to CI-3. If a filter has removed CI-2 from the view, the relationship between CI-1 and CI-3 is virtual. For more information about virtual relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

Dependency Solid red The destination CI depends on the source CI. For more information about dependency relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

Table 1-5: Status icons for CIs or relationships

Icon Description



Click Options in the toolbar to open the Options dialog box, where you can change line colors and styles.

Display pane actionsYou start by selecting a dataset in the query options. Based on the resulting list of CIs that are returned from your search, you can perform various actions inside the display pane. For example, right-click inside the display pane and then select Show All Sandbox Items.

Impact Solid fuchsia The source CI impacts the destination CI. This impact relationship line represents a “pure” impact relationship that is a hard coded and unchangeable part of the relationship definition.Contrast the Impact relationship type to an existing relationship (for example, Component) where the HasImpact attribute is set to Yes. For more information about impact relationships, see “Impact states in Atrium Impact Simulator” on page 109 and the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Component Solid green The destination CI is a component of the source CI. For more information about component relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

BMC_Genealogy Solid black The destination CI is a clone of the source CI. For more information about BMC_Genealogy relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

Table 1-6: Relationship lines in Atrium Explorer (Sheet 2 of 2)

Relationship type Default line Description

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Figure 1-11: Available actions inside the display pane

Table 1-7 lists the actions you can perform inside the display pane. Not all operations are supported in every view. For example, you can only show all sandbox items inside the Sandbox.

Table 1-7: Actions you can perform in the display pane

Action Description

Select All Objects To select all objects in the view, right-click in the display pane and then choose Select All Objects. All the objects are then high-lighted in the view.

Create CI To create a CI, right-click in the display pane and then choose Create CI. The Classes pane automatically opens and help text is displayed: Drag a class from the classes pane to the view to create a CI.

For more information, see “Creating instances” on page 88.Create relationship To create a relationship, right-click in the display pane and then

choose Create relationship. The Create Relationship Mode is automatically enabled and help text is displayed: Create relationship mode has been turned on.

For more information, see “Creating relationships between CIs” on page 91.

View as Production To view only the production instances, right-click in the display pane and then choose View as Production. The Asset view and only the production instances appear in the display pane.For more information, see “Working with related CIs” on page 74.



CI actions you can perform in the display paneYou start by selecting a dataset in the query options. Based on the resulting list of CIs that are returned from your search, you can display, edit, or delete those instances in a particular view on the display pane.

Figure 1-12: Down arrow menu options when you select an instance

Show All Sandbox Items

To review all the CI and relationship instances in the Sandbox before you promote them, right-click in the display pane and then choose Show All Sandbox Items. All the CIs and their relationships in your Sandbox dataset are displayed.

View as Impact Model

To view only the CIs with impact relationships, right-click in the display pane and then choose View as Impact Model. A read-only topology view of the Impact Model appears. You can use the Layout menu to specify the layout (for example, Hierarchic) and direction (for example, Top to Bottom) of the instances, but you cannot expand or edit the Impact Model. When you finish with the Impact Model, close the view to return to Atrium Explorer.

Table 1-7: Actions you can perform in the display pane

Action Description

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After you select the instance, you click the down arrow and then you select an item from the menu. Not all operations are supported in every view. For example, you can only display—not edit or delete—CIs from the BMC.ASSET view. When you try to edit a CI from the BMC.ASSET view, you are prompted to create a new Sandbox view. Only inside the Sandbox view can you edit the CI or delete it from the database. When you make your final edits to the CI, you then promote it to the BMC.ASSET dataset. For more information, see “Views of the dataset in the display pane” on page 21.

Table 1-8: Actions you can perform in the display pane (Sheet 1 of 3)

Action Description

Edit To edit all the attribute values of an instance, click the down arrow and then choose Edit. For more information, see “Editing instances” on page 96.

Quick Edit To edit the name and short description of an instance, click the down arrow and then choose Quick Edit. For more information, see “Editing instances” on page 96.

Delete from Database

To delete instances, click the down arrow and then choose Delete from Database. The Delete from Database command determines whether the selected instance should be:

Marked as deleted, or soft deleted. This action is indicated by the Deleted icon. Deleted from the dataset, or hard deleted. The instance is deleted from the database and removed from the view.

For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.

Discard Sandbox Changes

To remove instances or relationships from the Sandbox that you do not want to promote, click the down arrow and then choose Discard Sandbox Changes. The instance is removed from the Sandbox and any changes that you have made are discarded.For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.

Remove From View To remove an instance from a view, click the down arrow and then choose Remove From View.For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.

Properties To view a list of instance properties, click the down arrow and select Properties. For more detailed information about the properties of an instance, open that instance for editing as described in “Editing instances” on page 96.



Impacted Services To view of a list of services that are potentially impacted if the CI selected in the current view is unavailable or impaired, click the down arrow and then choose Impacted Services.These services have the potential of being impacted if the selected CI is affected adversely. For example, a service that depends on a server will be impacted if the server is down. You can drag a service from the Impacted Services list to the current view. For more information about impacted services, see “Impact states in Atrium Impact Simulator” on page 109.

Expand Children To view any destination CIs in the display pane, click the down arrow and then choose Expand Children.

Expand Parents To view any source CIs in the display pane, click the down arrow and then choose Expand Parents.

Expand Both To view both the source and destination CIs in the display pane, click the down arrow and then choose Expand Both.

Expand Default To expand the CI according to its default setting, click the down arrow and then choose Expand Default.

If a scope is defined for the CI, Expand Default uses the scope to expand the CI. If no scope is defined for the CI, the CI expands both the source and destination CIs.

Note: The Expand Default menu option performs the same action as double-clicking the CI.

Some CIs include a “scope” definition. A scope is a predefined query that limits the type of CIs displayed when you expand a CI. Not all CI classes have scope definitions. The current scopes available are:

Business ServiceApplicationClusterSoftware ServerComputer System (defined as Server)

For example, the Business Service scope expands the CI to display only Business Service, Application, Software Server, Computer System, and Cluster CIs.

Collapse Children To hide the destination CIs in the display pane, click the down arrow and then choose Collapse Children.

Collapse Parents To hide the source CIs in the display pane, click the down arrow and then choose Collapse Parents.


Action Description

30 User’s Guide


Group Children To group CIs of the same class (that is, the common children CIs) related to a parent CI, click the down arrow and then choose Group Children. When the Select Class Type(s) to Group dialog box appears, perform one of the following actions:

Select one or more classes to group and then click GroupClick Select All and then click Group.

Group Parents To group CIs of the same class (that is, the common parent CIs) related to a child CI, click the down arrow and then choose Group Parents.

Simulate Impact To run an impact simulation, click the down arrow and then choose Simulate Impact. For more information, see “Running an impact simulation” on page 113.

Quick Impact Simulator

To access a streamlined version of Atrium Impact Simulator that lets you simulate the impact of a CI being unavailable without having to launch the Atrium Impact Simulator, click the down arrow and then choose Quick Impact Simulator. For more information, see “Running a quick impact simulation” on page 118.

Compare Instances To compare Sandbox CIs against the version in the production dataset so that you can analyze manual changes made, click the down arrow and then choose Compare Instances. For more information, see “Comparing CI and relationship instances” on page 102.

Compare Against Asset Version

To compare an instance in the Sandbox with the BMC Asset dataset, click the down arrow and then choose Compare Against Asset Version. For more information, see “Comparing CI and relationship instances” on page 102.

View History To view the audit history of an instance, click the down arrow and and then choose View History.For more information, see “Viewing instance history” on page 104.


Action Description



Navigation paneThe navigation pane enables you to control the instances and views that are available in the display pane. It also enables you to query BMC Atrium CMDB for specific instances to add to a view in the display pane. The navigation pane has several sections, as described in Table 1-9.

Table 1-9: Sections of the Atrium Explorer navigation pane

Section Description

Classes Lists the classes available in the data model. You can choose to view classes as an alphabetical list of names with large icons, an alphabetical list of names with small icons, and a hierarchical list of icons.You can drag a class to the display pane to create a new instance of that class, and add that instance to the current view. See “Creating instances” on page 88 for more information.

Note: You cannot directly create CIs in the BMC Asset dataset, which is reserved for production use. To add new CIs in the BMC Asset dataset, you must create the CIs in your Sandbox dataset and promote them.

Views For each saved view, this section provides the name, the type (local or global), and a description. Select a view and click Open to open that view in the display pane. See “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77 for more information.

Find Enables you to query BMC Atrium CMDB for specific instances. After running a query, drag an instance from the results list to add it to the current view.

Note: You can drag an instance from the results list to a view only if the view's dataset is the same as the query's dataset. If the view's dataset differs from the query's dataset, a red X appears on the instance when you drag it and the instance is moved back to the results list. Additionally, the following message appears in the display pane: CI dataset does not match view dataset

See “Finding BMC Atrium CMDB data” on page 35 for more information.

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Configuring instance display options in Atrium ExplorerYou can configure options for displaying instances in Atrium Explorer.

Figure 1-13: Configuring instance display options in Atrium Explorer

To configure instance display options in Atrium Explorer

1 Open Atrium Explorer.

2 In the Atrium Explorer toolbar, click Options.

3 In the Options dialog box, configure the following options:

Maximum Number of Characters to display (General tab)—Sets the number of characters to display for instance names. Default is 32.

Number of Graph Expansion Levels (General tab)— Sets the number of levels to open by default for an instance that you add to a view. Default is 2.

(Non-Query View) Expand Graph (General tab)—Sets where to display CIs and relationships when you expand a CI.

View—By default, adds the expanded CIs directly to the view.

Popup—Displays the expanded CIs in a popup dialog box.

For more information, see “Working with related CIs” on page 74.

NOTE In the Atrium Explorer Query view, CIs are always expanded as popups. For more information, see “Creating queries with folding rules” on page 60.

Relationship Types tab—Sets the color, weight, and style of the lines used to indicate relationships. To revert to the original color scheme, click Restore Defaults.

Dataset Backgrounds tab—Sets the background color for different types of views. To revert to the original color scheme, click Restore Defaults.

4 Click OK.



34 User’s Guide

Chapter

2
Finding BMC Atrium CMDB data
This section explains how to use the Atrium Explorer application to query BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for configuration item (CI) and relationship instances.

The following topics are provided:Viewing data in Atrium Explorer (page 36)Find tab interface (page 38)Finding instances using a saved query (page 40)Query structure (page 43)Shared and personal queries (page 46)Viewing federated data (page 46)Using the Query Builder to create a new query (page 48)Editing a query (page 68)Copying a query (page 69)Configuring query options (page 69)Using BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Remedy AR System class forms to find instances (page 70)



Viewing data in Atrium ExplorerAtrium Explorer provides many ways to view BMC Atrium CMDB data. You can start by opening Atrium Explorer and running one of the out-of-the-box queries (for example, Business Services). The query returns a list of results.

Figure 2-1: Viewing data in Atrium Explorer

All CIs and relationships visible in the display pane are represented in a view (as shown in Figure 2-1). You can have several views of different datasets open at once. Though only one view at a time is active, you can switch between the views.

36 User’s Guide

Viewing data in Atrium Explorer

You now have several options for viewing the CI and relationship data.

Views display CI and relationship instances in Atrium Explorer, providing distinct ways to view the instances in BMC Atrium CMDB. Views are especially useful after you have queried the CI data that you want to view and then you have filtered out the CIs you want to exclude. For more information, see “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77.

Table 2-1: Methods for viewing CI and relationship data

Method Description For more information

Expand the CI to view underlying data

Drag a CI into the view and double-click it. The CI expands according to its default setting to display related CIs.

“Expand Default” on page 30

Create a filter to hide data

Filters hide the CI or relationship instances that are visible in the current view (for example, the IP Endpoint class of the computer system). If CIs are excluded from view, their absence is indicated by a red dashed lined that indicates a virtual relationship line.

“Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed” on page 80“Relationships” on page 25

Create a query to view data

A graphical map is used to build and display customized queries. In addition to the out-of-the-box queries installed with Atrium Explorer, you can build simple or advanced queries to view different patterns of data.

“Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48

Create a folded query to hide data

The results of a folded query are displayed in a Query view. A fold icon and a dashed red virtual relationship line indicates the presence of hidden CIs.

“Creating queries with folding rules” on page 60



Find tab interfaceUse the Find tab to perform important query functions in Atrium Explorer.

Figure 2-2: Find tab in Atrium Explorer

These functions include searching for CIs in a specific dataset, configuring query options, showing the CI properties, and so on. The Find tab is divided into the following main areas:

Find tab toolbar

Query list

Query results list

Display pane that shows CIs in a particular view (for example, the Sandbox or the Query view)

Out-of-the-box query installed with BMC Atrium CMDB

Custom categories and queries you create for your own company

Additional buttons available in Table view when displaying instances

Find tab toolbar buttons

Query list Query results list Display pane (Table view)

38 User’s Guide

Find tab interface

Find tab toolbar Use the Find tab toolbar to create, copy, modify, or delete queries. You can configure important query options (for example, the dataset). You can also display or edit CI properties from the Find toolbar. Table 2-2 describes the buttons on the toolbar.

Table 2-2: Find tab toolbar controls (Sheet 1 of 2)


New Query Creates a new query in the Query Builder. See “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48 for more information.

Copy Query Copies a query from the list. You can rename the query and modify the search conditions. See “Copying a query” on page 69 for more information.

Edit Query Modifies a query from the list. See “Editing a query” on page 68 for more information.

Delete Query Permanently deletes a query from the list.

Run Query Runs the query without changing any search conditions. See “Finding instances using a saved query” on page 40 for more information.

Show Results as Query View

Runs a query that uses folding rules to restrict which instances are visible in Atrium Explorer. See “Creating queries with folding rules” on page 60 for more information.

Note: If no such query is defined, this icon is disabled in the Find tab.

Dataset list Selects the dataset against which the query is run.

Query Options Configure options that determine the default behavior of all queries. See “Configuring query options” on page 69 for more information.

Refresh Query Refreshes results in the query list.

Show Properties Displays the properties of the CI that was selected from the query list. Also visible in the Table View.

Edit CI Lets you edit the CI properties if the CI is in an editable dataset (for example, the Sandbox). Otherwise, you must convert the Asset view to a new Sandbox view, perform your edits, and then run a promotion. See “Editing instances” on page 96 for more information. Also visible in the Table View.



Finding instances using a saved queryBy default, the Query list shows several queries that were installed with BMC Atrium Core. Figure 2-3 shows the out-of-the-box queries that are available after installation. For example, the sample queries enable you to search for all Computers with a specified operating system, or all virtual machines.

NOTE You cannot modify or delete these out-of-the-box queries. However, you can copy them to use as templates when creating your own queries.

Figure 2-3: Queries, variable conditions, and results

Show in View Displays the CI from the query list in its dataset view within the display pane.

Compare Instances Compares instances in Atrium Explorer within a single dataset or from two different datasets in the display pane. Also visible in the Table View. See “Comparing CI and relationship instances” on page 102 for more information.

View History Displays the audit history of an instance. Also visible in the Table View. See “Viewing instance history” on page 104 for more information.

Configure Columns Displays columns visible in the Table View of the display pane. Add or remove columns as needed.

Create Report Creates a report (in .csv format) that lists details about the instances selected in the Table View of the display pane. For more information, see “Finding instances using a saved query” on page 40.

Table 2-2: Find tab toolbar controls (Sheet 2 of 2)


Query results

Query name

Variable conditions

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Finding instances using a saved query

After you run a query, the results are displayed in a list. You can copy the query results to the Atrium Explorer display pane.

Queries enable you to find instances based on query criteria such as multiple classes, attributes, relationships, and the grouping of query conditions. For example, you can query for all computer systems in Houston or London that are running Microsoft Windows 7.

You cannot modify the out-of-the-box queries in the Query list, but you can use them as a template for creating new queries. The Find section can also include queries that were created and saved by other users. For more information about creating and saving queries, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.

Pause your mouse pointer on a query name to display a description of that query. If a saved query has an arrow next to its name, you can click that arrow to see the variable conditions for that query.

The results list shows all instances that match the query criteria. Drag an instance from the results list to the display pane to add that instance to the current view. For more information about viewing instances, see “Working with related CIs” on page 74.

NOTE You can drag an instance from the results list to a view only if the view's dataset is the same as the query's dataset. If the view's dataset differs from the query's dataset, a red X appears on the instance when you drag it and the instance is moved back to the results list. Additionally, the following message appears in the display pane: CI dataset does not match view dataset

NOTE When you create CI and relationship instances, BMC recommends that you follow the best practices outlined in the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Modeling Guide The out-of-the-box queries assume that CI and relationship instances have been created following the best-practice guidelines in this guide. If you do not follow these best practices while creating CI and relationship instances, the out-of-the-box queries might ignore these instances while displaying the results list.

To find instances using a saved query

1 Open the Query list.

The Query list can appear in various locations in BMC Atrium CMDB products, including the Find section of Atrium Explorer and the Add CI dialog box of Atrium Impact Simulator.

2 In the Query list, click Options.

3 In the Dataset list, select the dataset against which the query is run.

4 Click OK.

5 In the Query list, select a query.



6 Perform one of the following actions:

All instances that match the query criteria appear in the results list.

7 (optional) Perform one or more of the following actions for the instances in the results list:

Action Steps

Run the query without changing conditions

Click Run for Simple Search.

Edit values for query conditions before running the query

1 Click the arrow by the query name.2 Select an operator and enter a value for any

condition you want to edit.3 Click Search for Advanced Search.

Configure options that determine the default behavior of all queries. For more information, see “Configuring query options” on page 69.

Click Options.

Action Step

View properties for a selected instance in the Properties section of the navigation pane.

Click Show Properties.

Edit some of the attributes for a selected instance.

Note: You cannot edit instances in the BMC Asset dataset. You must convert the Asset view to a new Sandbox view and then perform your edits.

For more information about editing instances, see “Editing instances” on page 96.

Click Edit.

Copy or drag one or more selected instances to a view in the display pane.For more information about working with instances in the display pane, see “Working with related CIs” on page 74.

Click Show in View.

Compare two instances within a single dataset or from two different datasets.For more information, see “Comparing CI and relationship instances” on page 102.

Click Compare Instances.

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Query structure

Query structureQueries can include one or more CI classes and their relationships to other CI classes. For example, a query for all computer systems running a particular operating system would include the BMC_ComputerSystem CI class, the BMC_HostedSystemComponent relationship class, and the BMC_OperatingSystem CI class.

For each class, you can create one or more query conditions based on the attributes of that class. For example, a query for computer systems with a particular operating system might include several conditions for the BMC_ComputerSystem class (for the Name, ShortDescription, ManufacturerName, and Model attributes) and other conditions for the BMC_OperatingSystem class (for the ManufacturerName, OSType, and VersionNumber attributes). For more information, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48. Figure 2-4 shows the sections of the Query dialog box.

Figure 2-4: Sections of the Query dialog box

View audit history of an instance. For more information, see “Viewing instance history” on page 104.

Click View History.

Creates a report (in .csv format) that lists details about the instances selected in the Table View of the display pane.

Click Create report.

Action Step

Classes and relationships in query

Available classes in base class

Query condition buttons



When you connect a CI class to another CI class by a relationship class in a query, you can specify the direction of the relationship. Depending on the CI and relationship classes, the first CI class can be either the source or destination of the relationship.

Best practice

When you create an advanced query, use specific relationship classes to make your query more efficient. Start with a CI class, add a relationship class, and then a second CI class that is connected to the first CI class by the relationship. For example, you might query for all computer systems with Windows 7 operating systems by building a query that includes the BMC_ComputerSystem and BMC_OperatingSystem CI classes, as well as the BMC_HostedSystemComponents relationship class.

Relational-algebra formattingAtrium Explorer queries use a relational-algebra format based on Structured Query Language (SQL). For example, in a query for computer systems in Houston or London, the two conditions for BMC_PhysicalLocation are linked by a Boolean OR operator.

Relational-algebra formatting also enables you to group query conditions. For example, a query for all computer systems in either Houston or London and with a reconciliation ID. The condition that queries the BMC_PhysicalLocation class for the City attribute that matches Houston is grouped with the condition that queries for the City attribute that matches London. That group is joined by a Boolean AND operator to a condition that queries for CIs that have a reconciliation ID. These conditions are written in a relational-algebra format as:

(City = “Houston” OR City = “London”) AND ReconciliationId != NULL

When you have more than one condition in a query, use the query condition buttons in the Query dialog box to group and order the conditions according to relational algebra formatting. Table 2-3 describes the query condition buttons.

For more information about relational algebra in queries, see the BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04 Workflow Objects Guide.

Table 2-3: Query condition buttons

Button Description

Edit condition Edits condition in the query.

Remove condition Removes the selected condition from the query.

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Query structure

Queries with parametersYou can provide the ability for users of a saved query to edit the value for one or more conditions before running the query. This enables you to define multiple conditions as part of a single query. You and others can quickly edit a portion of the query without creating and saving a new query. When you create or edit a query, select the check box for any condition to allow users to edit the value for that condition.

For example, one of the tasks of an IT staff member at Calbro Services is to make sure that all computers with the Windows 7 operating systems are updated with the latest service packs. (For more information about how to create such a query, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.) The IT staff member creates an advanced query to find Calbro Services computer systems and defines the following conditions for the query:

OSType=Microsoft Windows 7

ServicePack=latestServicePackName

Figure 2-5: Saved query with multiple conditions

When Microsoft announces the release of a new Windows 7 service pack, such as Windows 7 Service Pack 1, the IT staff member runs the query with the following values set for the query conditions:

OSType=Microsoft Windows 7

ServicePack!=Windows 7 Service Pack 1

The query returns all Windows 7 operating system computers where Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is not installed. The IT staff member can install Windows 7 Service Pack 1 on the Calbro Services computer systems that are returned by the query.

You can specify the labels that appear for variable attributes in the Query list. This is helpful when a query involves multiple classes, and variable conditions from different classes refer to attributes with the same name. For example, Name is a common attribute. If you do not specify a label, the attribute name is used as the label in the Query list.



When you create a query, if you provide a value for a variable condition, that value appears as the default value for that condition in the navigation pane. If you do not provide a value, no default value appears.

Variable conditions without values are not included when the query is run. For example, an IT staff member at Calbro Services has saved a query that searches for Calbro Services computer systems located in New York City, with a variable parameter for the City attribute. If the IT staff member runs this query without specifying a city, the query returns all Calbro Services computer systems that are related to any location. Even if some Calbro Services computer systems are not associated with a location, the query still returns those CIs. However, if the variable conditions include values, the query returns instances only for which the condition applies.

Conditions that are not selected as variable are always included when the query is run.

Shared and personal queriesWhen you create a query, you have the option of saving the query, as a Personal Query or Shared Query, to run later from the Find section. A saved query is stored as an instance of the BMC_UIComponent form.

You can save a query as one of the following types:

Personal Query—If you have the CMDB Data View role, you can create this type of a query. You can use only personal queries that you created. By default, members with the CMDB Data View role have access to a shared query.

Shared Query—If you have the CMDB Console Admin role, you can create, edit, and delete shared queries. Access to use a shared query is determined by the CMDBRowLevelSecurity attribute value for the query’s instance on the BMC_UIComponent form.

For more information about permissions and roles, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Viewing federated dataFederated data is information about a CI that is stored outside BMC Atrium CMDB and is linked to CIs in BMC Atrium CMDB. Atrium Explorer allows you to retrieve federated instances that are related to a core CI in the BMC Atrium CMDB.

NOTE If the BMC Remedy ITSM applications are installed on your system, the Open Launch Context Menu provides links to federated records (for example, change requests or incidents) related to the CI selected in the Atrium Explorer display pane.

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Viewing federated data

You can view additional federated data from Atrium Explorer only if an administrator has set up federation through the Federation Manager. An administrator can configure federated data to be available in the Atrium Explorer display pane, appearing as instances related to CIs that are stored in BMC Atrium CMDB. Federated instances of the same federated data class appear as a CI group. For more information about CI groups, see “Instance groups” on page 77.

The base class for federated data classes is BMC_FederatedBaseElement. When creating a query that includes federated data and federated relationship classes, you cannot add query conditions for federated relationship classes. A federated relationship class contains no data; it exists only to connect a federated data class to a CI class in your data model.

If an administrator has configured a separate application to display federated data, perform the following procedure to view that federated data.

Figure 2-6: Relationship link between CI instance and external data in federated class

For high-level information about federation, see the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Concepts and Planning Guide. For more information about federated data and federated relationship classes, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

To view a CI related to federated data

1 In Atrium Explorer, query the CI that you want to view.

In Figure 2-6, the saved query was an OR search for Calbro Services computer system CIs where Model = PowerEdge or Manufacturer = Dell Computer Systems.

2 Drag the CI into the display pane.



3 Double-click the CI.

If you successfully related the source class and the federated destination class, the federated class is displayed below the CI. Figure 2-6 shows that the bank server CI is related to a federated class.

4 Double-click the federated class.

If you successfully created a federated relationship qualification, the federated CI is displayed in Atrium Explorer. This federated CI is a static record—you cannot modify it in any way because the database table underlying the federated class is external to BMC Atrium CMDB and not under its control.

To view federated data in an application launched from the Atrium Explorer

1 Select a CI in the Atrium Explorer display pane.

2 In the toolbar, click Open Launch in Context Menu.

3 Select a launch link to open (for example, View Related Change Requests).

An application chosen by an administrator launches to display the federated data.

Using the Query Builder to create a new queryFor better analysis of your BMC Atrium CMDB data, the Query Builder helps you build topological queries with any pattern possible. In addition to building simple queries that walk a particular path, you can build pattern queries to create service models. You can then link logical CIs (such as technical services) to corresponding applications or to servers that support the service. You can also specify count restrictions in the criteria for a relationship. This functionality allows you to create queries that return, for example, only servers with three or more hard drives.

Using the results returned by an advanced query—for example, all the applications and services that comprise the ITSM business service at Calbro Services—you can analyze your current service models and create new logical entities.

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Using the Query Builder to create a new query

Figure 2-7: Query Builder

You use the Query Builder to create new categories and new queries for configuration item (CI) and relationship instances. It helps you determine which CIs to display (or expand) in Atrium Explorer.

When you drag an item from the result list to the Query Builder canvas, the graph expands according to the items in the query.

You can use the query-by-path capability to search for any simple or detailed pattern containing multiple relationships.

You can use the lanes in the Query Builder to construct complex searches. The lanes determine what level each item is displayed in.

NOTE The lanes used in the Query Builder only affect how items are arranged in query views. In regular instance views, the items are arranged according to the selected layout setting. The Layered layout arranges the items by levels pre-defined for each type.

The top lane in the query contains one or more items that are required in the query—results are only returned from the query if it includes instances of that item. The other lanes are optional.

You can include multiple items in multiple lanes. Based on the relationships that you draw between the items, the items in the various lanes are relative to each other:

Items in the second lane are relative to the items in the top lane

Items in the third lane are relative to items in the second and top lanes, and so forth.

Items in the same lane cannot be joined together with a relationship.

Select base class

Select Tile, List, or Tree view of classes

List of available classes

Use the Locate field to filter the list of classes

Lanes in the Query panel



When specifying the relationships between various items, you can specify that items in lower lanes must be returned in the query results. If the lower item must be present in each result, you restrict the CIs displayed in the query results list.

You can include optional items in the query that do not restrict the results, but add more query items within the visualization.

You can specify count restrictions in the criteria for a relationship. This functionality restricts the CIs displayed in the query results list and allows you to create queries that return, for example, only servers with three or more hard drives.

You can build a query that circles back in a “loop” to the top item. For example, you might want your query to return all software servers that listen on a certain IP address, and also return the computer system. Only required links are supported in a loop.

NOTE You cannot query currency, diary, and attachment attributes.

You can build a query with “folding” rules that hide less important CIs. You can later unfold these CIs in Atrium Explorer as needed.

Creating a simple queryThe following example shows how to create a simple query that searches for all computers at Calbro Services. This query includes a condition that limits the search to computers that have “Calbro” in their name. Finally, it creates a new category for Calbro Services in the query list.

Before you begin

As test data, create several Computer System CIs and name them appropriately (for example, Calbro_ComputerSystem_SJ1). When you are finished, promote the CIs to the Asset dataset.

To create a simple query using the Query Builder


2 Click the Find tab.

3 In the Find tab toolbar, click New.

4 In the General Information tab, enter the following:

a In the Query Name field, type a new name for the query (for example, Computer System CIs).

b (optional) In the Category field, type a category for the query. If you create a new category (for example, Calbro Services), it is then displayed in the Query list.

c (optional) In the Description field, type a description of the query.

d Specify if the query is shared or personal. For more information, see “Shared and personal queries” on page 46.

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Figure 2-8: Defining General Information in Query Builder

5 Click the Editor tab.

6 (optional) Select the base class to use with the query.

By default, the BMC_BaseElement classes in the BMC Common Data Model are displayed (Figure 2-9 on page 52). You can click the Select base class down arrow to view a different set of classes. For example, select BMC_FederatedBaseElement to view any federated classes that exist in your BMC Atrium CMDB data model. The class list refreshes to show the subclasses of that base class.

For easier viewing, you can select a Tile, List, or Tree view of the subclasses.

7 (optional) To filter the list of classes that are displayed, type a letter, word, or phrase in the Locate field.

If you type com in the Locate field, the list shrinks and only classes with “com” in their name are displayed (for example, Communication or Computer).

8 Drag and drop a class from the list to the Drop additional classes here lane in the Query panel.

In this example, you would select the Computer System class.



Figure 2-9: Creating queries

The first object (Computer System) that you drag into the top lane of the Query builder is special in several different ways. It becomes the “top” of the query and you cannot place any items above it. This object then is a required element in the query—results are only returned from the query if it includes instances of that object.

NOTE You can add multiple objects to the top lane as long as the items in the graph are all connected. For additional information about adding objects and relationships into the Query Builder, see “Creating an advanced query” on page 55.

In “Creating an advanced query” on page 55, you add additional objects and relationships into the Query Builder.

If necessary, select a class in the Query panel and then click the Delete icon to remove it.

9 To edit the class conditions, double-click the class (or select the class and then click the edit button in the toolbar).

Lane in Query panel that contains class you want to query

Select base class list

Select tile, list, or tree view of the classes

Available classes

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10 In the Conditions dialog box, use the fields and drop-down lists to create one or more conditions for that class. These conditions appear in the Find tab after you create the query.

Figure 2-10: Creating query conditions for classes

a Click the checkbox to enable the query conditions.

b Type a name for the condition, such as the label of the attribute (for example, OS Version or Manufacturer).

c Select an attribute (for example, VersionNumber or ManufacturerName).

d Select an operator (for example, LIKE or !=).

e Type a value (for example, Microsoft).

f If you want to add another condition, select AND or OR. An additional row then appears in the Conditions dialog box.

g If you have multiple conditions, use the move up or move down buttons to arrange and group conditions to structure the query according to relational algebra formatting.

For example, you could create a class condition that queries only Dell Computers in the San Jose location (ManufacturerName LIKE “Dell” AND Domain LIKE “San Jose”). A yellow diamond then appears next to the class, indicating that the class uses a condition.

h Click Save.

In our simple query, create a query condition that searches for all computer systems that include “Calbro” in their name—Name LIKE Calbro%.

For more information about query structure, see “Query structure” on page 43.



11 Click the Viewing Options tab to select the CI attributes for display in the query output table.

Figure 2-11: Specifying CI attributes for display in the query

a From the Configuration Items list, select a class (for example, Computer System).

b From the Attributes Selected For Display list, select all attributes to display in the query output table.

c Select attributes from all the Configuration Item classes in the list.

12 Click Save to close the Query dialog box.

The new category and your new query appears in the Query list (see Figure 2-12 on page 55).

To test the results of your simple query

1 In the Find tab, review the categories in the query list.

Calbro Services now appears in the list as a new category.

2 Click the Calbro Services category.

3 Select the Computer System CIs query and then click Search.

This simple query returns all computer systems that include “Calbro” in their name.

4 Drag one or more CIs into the display pane to review them.

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Figure 2-12: New category and query with results returned

Creating an advanced queryThe following example shows how to create an advanced topological query that searches for all Calbro Services computers that have a required component relationship to disk drives. It assumes you already understand how to create a simple query and use conditions in your query.

Before you begin

As test data, create one DiskDrive CI, name it Calbro_DiskDrive_1, and then create a Component relationship with one of the Calbro Computer Systems. When you are finished, promote your changes to the Asset dataset.

To create an advanced query

1 Edit the simple query that you created previously.

(optional) In the General Information tab, change the name of the query to Computer System and Diskdrive CIs.


3 Drag and drop the Diskdrive class from the Base Element CIs list to the Drop additional classes here lanes in the Query panel.

Your advanced query can include multiple objects in multiple lanes. In this example, Computer System in the top lane is the required object in the query. By default, each item except the top item is optional.

New category and new query

Calbro computer CIs returned in query resultsQuery conditions



Figure 2-13: Creating advanced queries

4 Create a relationship between CI classes in your query.

For example, create a Component relationship between the Computer System and the Disk Drive CIs. Without any additional restrictions, your query would return all Computer Systems, even Computer System instances that do not have any Diskdrives. When the results are returned, you see a list of Computer System instances. However, if you view and expand the CI in the Atrium Explorer display pane, you would see all the items that are included in the query, not just the top one.

You must join all items you put in an advanced query by relationships to other items, and ultimately to the top item. You cannot join items in the same horizontal lane directly with a relationship. You should put additional connected items in a lower lane.

To create a relationship:

a In the Query panel, select a class in one lane and drag your cursor to a class in another lane.

The Relationship dialog box appears. You now can select the relationship type between the top and lower items.

Drag additional classes into lane to create advanced queries

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Figure 2-14: Specifying relationship between source and destination classes

b From the Type menu, specify the relationship type (for example, Component).

By default, the All Related relationship type is selected. This item includes all possible relationships in the query. But you can narrow the relationship type as needed. Depending on the type you select, other options might not be available. For example, if you select Has Impact, you can specify cardinality but not conditions—the Conditions tab is disabled.

Figure 2-15: Additional relationship options

c (optional) Specify the direction of the relationship.

Typically, the top item in the query is the source and the lower item is the destination.

d (optional) Select the Required checkbox.

By specifying that the lower item is required in each result, you restrict the CIs displayed in the query results list. For example, if Diskdrive is required, no Computer System instances are returned in the query that do not have any Diskdrives. For a relationship that joins the top item with a lower item, checking the Required checkbox means that the lower item is required in each result. When the query is run, no instances of the top item are returned in the results unless there is also at least one instance of the lower one.

e (optional) In the Required checkbox, specify the count restrictions in the criteria for a relationship.

By default, cardinality is not required. If an item is optional in the query definition, then empty parameters have no effect.



If you select Required for the relationship, you can also set conditions on the number of related items that must be present in order for the result to be returned.

These numbers do not only restrict how many items are shown in the result. Consider a relationship that connected the top item to another item in a lower layer (for example, a Computer System related to a Diskdrive). The numbers specify a minimum and a maximum range of the number of lower items connected to the top item.

In our example, the Diskdrive is a required element in the relationship. In addition, the default Unrestricted setting is used—Computer System is the top item, and the numerical condition is applied to Diskdrive, the lower item. As a result, the query returns only Computer Systems that are related to Diskdrives.

To add additional complexity to the query, you could apply the same logic to a third item (CDROM Drive) connected to the second item (Diskdrive).

Diskdrive is not the top item in the query, but is now considered the top item for purpose of the example (because it is directly connected to Computer System, the top item). The numerical restriction on the new relationship (between the second and third items) is a condition on how many instances of that third item are connected to each instance of the higher item. Depending on the cardinality requirements, you could construct a query that returns all computer systems that have at least one disk drive and at least one CDROM drive.

An advanced query can include multiple items and relationships in multiple lanes.

Table 2-4: Types of cardinality

Cardinality type Explanation

Unrestricted (1 to *) One instance of the top class is related to one or more instances of another class. This is the system default. For example, you query a computer system related to many disk drives. Your query returns computer systems with at least one disk drive.

Restricted (2 to *) If you specify a minimum (2...*), one instance of a class is related to two or more instance of another class. Your query returns only those computer systems that have two or more disk drives.

Minimum and maximum (2...4)

If you specify a minimum and maximum (2...4), one instance of the class is related to at least two instances and up to four instances of another class.Your query returns only computer systems that have between two and four hard drives.

One-to-one For a one-to-one cardinality restriction, you would select “1...1,” so that the minimum and maximum are one—one instance of a class is related to a single instance of another class. For example, you query one computer system to one disk drive. Your query returns only those computer systems that have one and only one disk drive.

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Finally, advanced queries can circle back in a loop to the item. But only required links are supported in a loop. If you complete the loop in the query, that final item is required. The query does not return any CIs on the attached end without that last connection.

Figure 2-16: Multiple items in query

f (optional) In the Conditions tab, use the drop-down lists to create relationship conditions.

NOTE You do not need to add conditions to most relationships.

g Click Save.

5 Repeat these steps until you have added all of the classes, conditions, and relationships necessary for the advanced query.


Your new advanced query appears in the Query list, under the Calbro Services category.

To test the results of your advanced query

1 Under the Calbro Services category, select the new Computer System and Diskdrive CIs query.

2 Click Search.

This advanced query returns only the one Computer System that was related to the Diskdrive. Unlike the previous simple query you created, none of the other Computer Systems are returned in the query.




When you drag the Computer System CI into the display pane, the CI automatically expands and you see that the Computer System CI is related to a Diskdrive CI.

Figure 2-17: New advanced query with results returned

Creating queries with folding rulesWhen you run a query in Atrium Explorer—for example, you expand a business service—too much data can clutter your view. You might want to see only the direct links between servers and not the IP Endpoint CIs. To hide CIs returned from a query, you can create a query that uses “folding” rules to hide instances that are currently visible.

New advanced query

Computer System CI expands to show relationship to Diskdrive CI

Only one Calbro computer CIs returned in query results

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Figure 2-18: Query view that uses folding rules

When you run the query that uses folding rules, the Query view displays the graphical results in Atrium Explorer. The Query view is a restricted view of the CIs, limited to the data returned from the query. The CIs returned in the Query view are a static snapshot of the data. As a result, the types of operations that you are allowed to perform are limited:

You can expand the parents and children of a CI, but the data is always displayed in a popup. You cannot add parent or children CIs back to the Query view.

If you are querying any dataset other than the BMC Asset dataset, you can edit the CIs returned. However, you cannot create or delete CIs or relationships in the Query view.

You cannot save a Query view.

The following example shows how to create a query that displays Calbro Computer CIs that are related to operating system CIs in the Query view but “folds” the CD ROM and Disk Drive CIs.

Before you begin

As test data, create the following CIs:

Calbro_CDROMDrive_1

Calbro_OperatingSystem_1

Query view results list Query view in Atrium Explorer



Create Component relationships with the Calbro Computer System CI that you earlier related to the Calbro_DiskDrive_1 CI. When you are finished, promote your changes to the Asset dataset.

To create queries with folding rules

1 Edit the advanced query that you created previously.

(optional) In the General Information tab, change the name of the query to Folded CIs.


3 Drag the CDROM Drive and Operating System classes into the lane next to the Disk Drive class in the query.

4 Create Component relationships with the Calbro Computer System CI.

5 Click the Viewing Options tab to select the CI attributes for display in the query output table.

6 Click the Folding tab.

Figure 2-19 displays a preview of your query. If you run this query without modification and you opened the Computer System CI inside the Query view, all three related CIs are displayed.

Figure 2-19: Query Preview

7 In the left pane, click the Computer System class.

The Computer System icon now displays a folder that indicates the three related classes have been folded in the query. The Query Preview pane shows that your query, if unmodified, displays only Computer System CIs. The other related CIs are not displayed in the Query view.

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8 In the left pane, click the Operating System class.

As shown in Figure 2-20, the Query Preview pane now shows that your query displays Computer System CIs that are related to Operating System CIs. The other CIs are folded into the Computer System CI.

Figure 2-20: Creating query with folding rules


To test the results of your folded query

1 Under the Calbro Services category, select the modified Folded CIs query.

2 Click Search.


The CI automatically expands and you see that the Computer System CI is related to the other three CIs.

4 To test the folded query, click Show Results as Query View.

5 Click Search.

The results are returned in the Query view (as shown in Figure 2-21). Query view is a split-pane view with result rows listed on the left and a topology canvas on the right. You select rows in the list to show their graphs on the canvas.

6 (optional) Use the accordion slider bar to resize the results list and the Query view.

7 Click the Computer System CI in the results list.



Only the Computer System CI and the Operating System CI are displayed in the Query view. The yellow folder icon is a visual indication that one or more CIs have been folded into the Computer System CI. If needed, you can switch between multiple views.

Figure 2-21: Folded query displayed in the Query view

8 In the Query view, perform one of the following actions:

Action Steps

Select one or more CIs from the results list

Click Select All to display all the CIs from the list. Press the Ctrl key and then click another CI in the results list to display it.

Unfold or fold the hidden CIs

1 Select the CI.2 Click the down arrow.3 Choose Unfold. The hidden CIs are displayed. 4 Click the down arrow on the original CI and then choose Fold

to hide the CIs. The hidden CIs are no longer displayed.

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Creating a query with nested folding rulesYour query can include nested folds. You can nest folded CIs inside other folded CIs. For example, the sample query that follows folds the Computer System and Software Server classes inside the query. The benefit is that the returned items are hidden if they are folded, and you have a more focused view with which to view the returned results.

Before you begin

Create a sample service model (for example, Business Service --> Application --> Application Infrastructure --> Software Server --> Computer System). When you are finished, promote your changes to the Asset dataset.

To create a query with nested folding rules

1 Create a new query.

2 Click the Editor tab and drag the CI classes into their appropriate lanes.

Edit CIs from the Query view

1 Set the query options to the Sandbox or Sample dataset.2 Search for the CI.3 Select a row to display the CI in the Query view. 4 Select the CI.5 Click the down arrow.6 Choose Edit or Quick Edit.

View the children and parents of a CI in a display-only popup

1 Double-click the CI. The children and parent CIs are displayed according to their relative layer in a popup. You can also click the down arrow on the CI and then select one of the Expand options (for example, Expand Both).

2 Click the close icon to close the popup. Because the CI data that is returned is static, you cannot add the CIs back into the Query view.

Action Steps



Figure 2-22: Adding classes to the query

3 Create relationships between the CI classes (for example, Has Impact).

4 Click the Viewing Options tab.

5 Click the Folding tab.

6 Build the nested folds:

a Create the inner fold by clicking a class (for example, Software Server).

This action folds the Computer System class (indicated by the light blue box) under the Software Server class (indicated by the folder in the dark blue box). If you ran this query without further modifications, Computer System CIs are not displayed because they are folded (as shown in the Query Preview pane).

b Click outside the object tree.

c Create the outer fold by clicking another class (for example, Application Infrastructure).

The left pane shows that you nested a fold inside a fold:

Software Server is folded under Application Infrastructure

Computer System is folded under Application

The Query Preview pane shows that your query displays only Business Service, Application, and Application Infrastructure CIs.

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Figure 2-23: Building the nested fold


To test the results of your nested folding query

1 Select the nested folding query.

2 Click Show Results as Query View.

3 Click Search.

The results are returned in the Query view.

4 Click the CI in the results list.

The Business Service, Application, and Application Infrastructure CIs are displayed in the Query view. The yellow folder icon on the Application Infrastructure CI is a visual indication that one or more CIs are included in the folds.

5 Click the Application Infrastructure CI and then select Unfold.

The Software Server CI is displayed. It also displays a yellow folder icon.

6 Click the Software Server CI and then select Unfold.

The Computer System CI is displayed.

Inner fold

Outer fold nests the first fold



Figure 2-24: Query with a nested fold

NOTE You cannot save a Query view. The main value of a Query view is that it is a restricted view of the CIs, a static snapshot limited to the data returned from the query.

Editing a queryAfter creating a query, you can modify it to change the conditions defined in the query or run the query on different CI and relationship classes.

NOTE You cannot modify out-of-the-box queries. You can only edit queries that you have created.

To edit a query



2 In the Query list, click Edit.

3 Modify the query information and criteria as required. For more information, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.

4 Click Save.

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Copying a query

Copying a queryAfter creating a query, you can create a copy of the query and run it on different CI and relationship classes. You can create a copy of an out-of-the-box query and any queries that you have created.

To copy a query



2 In the Query list, click Copy.

3 In the Query Name field, type a new name for the query.

4 (optional) In the Category field, type a category for the query. If you create a new category, it is displayed in the Query list.

5 (optional) In the Description field, type a description of the query.

6 Modify the query information and criteria as required. For more information, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.

7 Click Save.

Configuring query optionsYou can configure options that determine the default behavior of all queries.

NOTE If your query returns unexpected results, you might be using the wrong dataset. Check the Dataset option to make sure you are using the correct dataset.

To configure query options



2 In the Query list, click Options.

3 In the Edit Query Options dialog box, configure the following options:

Dataset—The dataset against which queries are run.

NOTE The selected dataset is not saved as part of query, but it allows you to preview the query results before saving the query.



Show Deleted Items—Whether instances that are marked for deletion are returned in query results.

Retrieve results up to—The maximum number of instances returned in query results. If the number is very large, BMC Atrium CMDB might still retrieve a smaller number of entries to optimize performance and reliability.

4 Click OK.

Using BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Remedy AR System class forms to find instances

An alternative to using queries is using BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Remedy AR System class forms. This method lets you find instances of the class whose form you open and instances of its subclasses. This alternative is available for all instances present in a view.

To use BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Remedy AR System class forms to find instances

1 In an Atrium Explorer view, click an instance of the class you want to search and select Edit.

If the BMC Remedy ITSM applications are installed (7.6.03 or later), Atrium Explorer opens the Asset view of the instance. For example, if you edit a computer system CI, the Computer System form (AST:ComputerSystem) is displayed.

Otherwise, Atrium Explorer opens the instance in its class form. For example, if you edit a computer system CI, the BMC.CORE:BMC_ComputerSystem class form is displayed.

NOTE BMC Remedy Asset Management does not have forms for all the classes in the CDM. If no Asset view of the instance exists, Atrium Explorer opens the instance in its class form.

2 Click New Search to enable the Search mode of the form.

3 (optional) Enter the search criteria in the form fields, in the advanced search bar, or a combination of both.

4 Click Search.

The form displays the instances in a results list.

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Using BMC Remedy ITSM or BMC Remedy AR System class forms to find instances

NOTE Another method is available to you if your BMC Remedy AR System administrator has configured the AR System Object List in the BMC Remedy Mid Tier. By opening the Object List with the following URL, all the BMC Remedy AR System forms that you are permitted to access are displayed: http://midTierServer:portNumber/arsys/forms. For more information, see the BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04 Mid Tier Guide.



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Chapter

3
Working with instances
This section explains how to use the Atrium Explorer application to view and create configuration item (CI) and relationship instances, and how to view instance history, related CIs, and federated data.

The following topics are provided:Working with related CIs (page 74)Working with layout controls to view CIs (page 82)Using the Sandbox view and dataset (page 85)Creating instances (page 88)Creating relationships between CIs (page 91)Editing instances (page 96)Deleting instances (page 98)Promoting instances (page 100)Identifying instances (page 102)Comparing CI and relationship instances (page 102)Viewing instance history (page 104)



Working with related CIsIn Atrium Explorer, you can view CIs and their relationships as a graphical map. You can traverse this map from one CI to another to view relationships at all levels throughout your environment. The display pane in Atrium Explorer provides an Asset view of the BMC Asset dataset so that you can browse the production CIs and their relationships in the view.

You can also view CIs and their relationships in a popup. For more information, see “Working with CIs and relationships in a popup” on page 75.

To work with CIs and relationships in the view

1 In the Find section of the Atrium Explorer navigation pane, query for the CI that you want to view.

For more information about finding CIs, see “Finding instances using a saved query” on page 40 and “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.

2 Drag one or more instances from the results list to the display pane.

NOTE You can drag an instance from the results list to a view only if the view's dataset is the same as the query's dataset. If the view's dataset differs from the query's dataset, a red X appears on the instance when you drag it and the instance is moved back to the results list. Additionally, the following message appears in the display pane: CI dataset does not match view dataset

3 Right-click in the display pane and choose View as Production to see the production instances in your environment.

The Asset view and only the production instances appear in the display pane.

4 (optional) Click the expand arrows on a CI icon to view related CIs.

5 (optional) Select an instance and view its properties in the Properties section of the navigation pane.

6 (optional) Select a filter from the Choose filter list inside the display pane.

Filters limit the instances that appear in a view. For more information about filters, see “Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed” on page 80.

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Working with related CIs

Working with CIs and relationships in a popupYou can view CIs and their relationships in a popup. The popup window lets you preview the set of expanded CIs before you decide to add them to the view.

Figure 3-1: Working with CIs in a popup

Before you begin

Configure Atrium Explorer to expand the graphical map to use popups, as described in “Configuring instance display options in Atrium Explorer” on page 33.

To work with CIs and relationships in a popup


2 Drag a CI from the results list to the display pane.

3 (optional) Select a filter from the Choose filter list (shown in the left layout menu) inside the display pane.

4 (optional) From the layout menu, select an option (for example, Hierarchic) to organize the view inside the popup.

5 Expand the CI.

The parents and children of the CI appear in a popup window, with the original CI highlighted (as shown in Figure 3-1). You can resize the popup or move it within the display pane.

When you select a filter, it is applied to both the original CI and the popup view—as indicated by the red virtual relationship line between the two CIs. To view an alternate configuration of CIs in the view, you can select a different filter from the layout menu, or even turn off the filter. Applying a different filter does not refresh the CIs displayed in the popup. The new filter can affect the popup content if you close the popup and then expand the CI again to open a new popup.



6 Perform one of the following tasks:

To add the expanded CIs shown in the popup to the original view, right-click an empty spot inside the popup and then click Add to View. The popup closes and the CIs displayed in the popup now appear in the view.

Click the red X to close the popup.

Viewing filtered CIs that are part of a virtual relationship in a popupAs shown in Figure 3-2, the virtual relationship line between the two CIs shows that one or more intermediate CIs are removed from the view by a filter. A popup window lets you view filtered CIs that are part of a virtual relationship.

Figure 3-2: Virtual relationship between two CIs

Before you begin

Select a filter that hides a CI in the view. In Figure 3-2, a filter hides the BMC_Chassis CI and produces a virtual relationship.

To view filtered CIs that are part of a virtual relationship

1 To show the CIs hidden in the view, double-click the relationship line (or right-click the virtual relationship line) and then select Show Hidden Objects.

The BMC_Chassis CI, hidden in the virtual relationship between BMC_DiskDrive and BMC_Database, is now displayed in a popup (shown in Figure 3-3).

Red virtual relationship line indicates CIs filtered in the view

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Figure 3-3: Hidden objects from a virtual relationship displayed in a popup window

The hidden CIs in this popup are display-only. Because the CIs already exist in the view—they are merely hidden by a filter—you cannot add them to the view.

2 Click the red X to close the popup.

Instance groupsMultiple instances of the same class are grouped in Atrium Explorer and are represented as either a folder icon (for CIs) or a circle icon (for federated instances). A number above the folder icon indicates the number of instances in the group.

Select and then pause your mouse pointer on a group icon to display the name of the class and the number of instances in the group.

Right-click a group and choose an option to display all items in the group or select items from the group. You can show specific items by choosing Select Items to Show and clicking the appropriate check boxes in the Select to Show dialog box.

By default, an instance group appears in Atrium Explorer when four or more instances of a class are related to a CI. BMC Atrium CMDB administrators can change the default number of instances that form an instance group. For more information about changing the instance group threshold, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Creating, saving, copying, or deleting viewsViews display CI and relationship instances in Atrium Explorer, providing distinct, localized ways to view the instances in BMC Atrium CMDB. For example, you might create a view of only the computer systems in one city, or of the most impacted servers in the network.

When you first open Atrium Explorer, the display pane contains an empty BMC Asset view. Populate the view by:

Using an out-of-the-box query or building a new query to discover CIs

Adding CIs and their relationships to the display pane

Expanding the CIs

Filtered CIs displayed in popup



Removing a CI from a view by right-clicking that instance and choosing Remove From View

Applying a filter to hide CIs in the view

Using the Map IT resources dialog box to update the view dynamically

After you have named and saved the view for reuse, you can reopen that view at any time, without having to repopulate the display pane. All saved views appear in the Views section of the navigation pane.

NOTE If you create a CI in a Sandbox view and you do not save the view, the CI is saved in the view's dataset. To review all the CIs and relationships in the Sandbox before you promote them, right-click in the display pane and then choose Show All Sandbox Items. All the CIs and their relationships from all Sandbox views are displayed.

To open a view, select that view and then click Open. You can have many views open at once. All opened views are listed at the bottom of the display pane, where you can click a name to make that view appear.

When you create a new view, you must specify whether the view is Shared or Personal. Shared views are available to everyone that logs in to Atrium Explorer. Personal views are available only to you.

To save time, you can create a copy of a view that displays a set of CI and relationship instances and then modify it as needed. Finally, you can delete views as needed.

To create and save a view

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a new view by using one of the following methods:

In the toolbar, click New View and then choose one of the menu items (for example, BMC Asset).

In an Asset view, click the CI and then choose Edit or Quick Edit.

The Asset view is converted to a new Sandbox view. For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.

2 If necessary, add instances to the display pane as described in “Working with related CIs” on page 74.

3 In the toolbar, click Save View.

4 In the Save View As dialog box, enter the following information:

Name—A name for the view. Consider using a name that indicates the purpose of the view.

Group—Whether the view is Shared or Personal.

Description—A more detailed explanation of the purpose of the view. Consider explaining the types of instances or the main CI displayed in the view.

5 Click Save.

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To copy a view

1 In Atrium Explorer, click the Views tab.

2 To copy a view, select that view and then click Copy.

3 In the Save View As dialog box, enter the name, group, and description.

4 Click Save.

To delete a view.

1 In Atrium Explorer, click the Views tab.

2 Select a view from the list and then click Delete.

3 Click OK to confirm that you really want to delete the view.

The view is removed from the list.

Saving a view as an imageIn Atrium Explorer, the display pane shows objects as a graphical chart. If you want to save a view of that chart for use outside of the Atrium Explorer, you can save the contents of the display pane as a png image.

To save a view as an image

1 In the Atrium Explorer display pane, open the view that you want to save as an image.

2 Use the zoom bar to resize the contents of the view to fit within the display pane.

3 Click Export View as Image.

4 In the Export Image dialog box, select a scale mode:

None—Saves the entire contents of the display pane, including areas that you must scroll to see, to a maximum size of 2880 pixels by 2880 pixels.ViewPort—Saves only the portion of the display pane that is currently visible.Fit—Scales the entire contents of the display pane to fit in the pixel parameters that you set.

5 Select the number of insets, which determines how many pixels of border surround the saved image.

6 Select a background color for the image, and then click Export.

7 Click Save to save the image to the location of your choice.



Using filters to restrict which instances are displayedAtrium Explorer filters limit the instances that are visible in the current view. Use the Filters section of the navigation pane to create and modify these filters.

Figure 3-4 shows the filter options available in the Filter dialog box.

NOTE Atrium Explorer filters differ in concept from BMC Remedy AR System filters. For more information about BMC Remedy AR System filters, see the BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04 Workflow Objects Guide.

Figure 3-4: Show and Hide options in the Filter dialog box

When you create a filter, you select CI and relationship classes, and then you specify whether the instances for those classes are included or excluded from the current view. If you expand a CI, any CIs that are filtered in the view are not displayed.

You can include or exclude the following base classes and their subclasses:

Base Element

All Related

BMC_FederatedBaseElement

BMC_FederatedBaseRelationship

But you can only run one filter at a time.

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When you select Show the selected classes, only instances in the Selected Classes pane are displayed. When you select Hide the selected classes, only classes in the Selected Classes pane are hidden. For example, you can build a filter that includes instances of the BMC_ComputerSystem and BMC_SoftwareServer CI classes, and also includes instances of the BMC_Component relationship class. This filter would not allow instances of other CI and relationship classes to be displayed.

You can also specify whether the filter excludes instances that are marked for deletion.

NOTE Each relationship level shown in Atrium Explorer consists of a relationship and a CI. If both instances meet the criteria of the currently selected filter, both are shown. If either instance does not meet the filter criteria, neither are shown. To view only impact relationships between CIs, right-click in the Atrium Explorer display pane and then choose View as Impact Model. A read-only topology view of the Impact Model appears.

When you create a filter, you can also determine whether that filter can be used by others or only by you. Shared filters are available to everyone. Personal filters are available only to you.

To create a filter

1 In the Atrium Explorer toolbar, click the Manage Filters icon.

2 In the Filters dialog box, click New.

3 In the Filter Name field of the Filter dialog box, enter a name for the filter.

NOTE The maximum number of characters that you can enter in the Filter Name field is 32.

4 Determine whether the filter is available to others by selecting either Shared Filter or Personal Filter.

5 (optional) In the Description field provide information about the purpose of the filter, such as whether it is meant to exclude certain types of instances, or when the filter should be applied.

6 If you want to filter instances that are marked for deletion, select the Show deleted items check box.

7 Select the classes that are included or excluded by the filter:

a From the Available Classes list, select one or more classes, and then click the right arrow to move those classes to the Selected Classes list.

b Select values for the Show the selected classes/Hide the selected classes option buttons to determine whether the selected classes are included or excluded by the filter.

8 Click OK.



To use a filter

1 Query the CIs that you want to view in Atrium Explorer.

2 Drag the CIs into the display pane.

3 Expand the CIs as needed.

For example, you can view the CIs in the view or in a popup.

4 Select a filter from the Choose filter list inside the display pane.

The view or popup is displayed again, with the CI or relationship instances excluded from the view.

Working with layout controls to view CIsThe layout controls work together to change the topology view of the CIs in the Atrium Explorer display pane. By default, the Layout view is set to Layered. When you can drag CI classes to the display pane—the CI automatically moves to its predefined layer. You can add CIs to the service model in any order. You then use the layout controls to change the layout (for example, to Hierarchic) and direction (Bottom to Top) of the instances in the display pane or to run filters.

Figure 3-5: Using layout controls to view CIs (Layered view)

To make the graphic UI predictable, the Layered view follows pre-defined best practices when displaying your service model. Out-of-the-box, Service CIs form the top layer, then Application CIs, and so on. These layers are customizable in the BMC_UIComponent form. If there are no Service CIs, then Application CIs appear on the top.

For more information on customizing layers, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Layout controls CIs in service model in

pre-defined layers

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Working with layout controls to view CIs

You can apply any of the following layout options to the CIs (for example, in the Sandbox or BMC Asset views).

Table 3-1: Layout control options

Layout control menu or button

Description

Choose filter Applies a saved filter, which limits the CIs that are visible in the current view or in a popup. Figure 3-5 shows the results of applying a filter—it has hidden one or more intermediate CIs in the view. The red dashed line indicates the virtual relationships between the CIs. See “Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed” on page 80 for more information.

Layered Specifies the layout of the CIs. Layered—Uses BMC best practices to organize the view in horizontal layers according to the type of CI, relative to other CI types. CIs of the same type are aligned even if there is a different number of connections from each CI of the same type to a common CI in a higher layer.The Layered arrangement ignores relationships for determining vertical positioning. The horizontal positioning adjusts in the view for the best relationship placement.In a Layered view, if three Software Servers are connected to an Application but one of the Servers is connected through an Application Infrastructure CI, then all three Servers are aligned on the same layer, with the Application Infrastructure CI between them and the Application (as shown in Figure 3-5 on page 82).Hierarchic—Organizes the CIs in the view according to the hierarchy of the classes in the data model.In a Hierarchic view, if three Software Servers are connected to an Application, but one of the Servers is connected through an Application Infrastructure CI, then the two Servers are aligned with the Application Infrastructure (one “hop” from the Application), and one Server would be below them (as shown in Figure 3-6 on page 84). Orthogonal—Arranges CIs in a compact format.Circular—Groups related CIs in circles to help you visualize how the groups are related.Organic—Groups instances according to their relationship with each other, with space between groups.

Top to Bottom Specifies the direction of the CIs, based on your layout selection. If you choose the Layered or Hierarchic layout option, you can also specify the direction of the CIs in the display pane:

Top to bottom (default)Bottom to topLeft to rightRight to left

Run Layout button If you have added new CIs to a view, click Run Layout in the view to reorganize the view according to the selected layout.



Before you begin

Review how to use queries and filters:

“Finding BMC Atrium CMDB data” on page 35

“Using filters to restrict which instances are displayed” on page 80

To work with layout controls to view CIs


2 Drag the CI from the results list to the display pane.

3 Expand the CI.

4 Select a filter from the Choose filter menu inside the display pane.

To view an alternate configuration of CIs in the view, you can select a different filter from the layout menu, or even turn off the filter.

5 Specify the layout (for example, Hierarchic) of the CIs.

Figure 3-6: Hierarchic layout (Bottom to Top)

6 Use the Top to Bottom menu to specify the direction of the CIs (for example, Bottom to Top) if you choose the Layered or Hierarchic layout option.

7 If you add new CIs to a view, click Run Layout in the view to reorganize the view according to the selected layout.

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Using the Sandbox view and dataset

Using the Sandbox view and datasetBy using a Sandbox dataset to edit CIs, you take advantage of a safety mechanism that prevents unintended changes to your production data. Only new or edited CIs are present in the Sandbox view—all other CIs exist in the production dataset. You cannot directly edit data in the production dataset. You must use the Sandbox. This makes sure that your edits are reconciled and the production dataset continues to accurately represent your environment.

Figure 3-7: Sandbox view and dataset

BMC Atrium CMDB automatically creates a personal Sandbox for every user, so that multiple users can edit CIs from the production dataset without interfering with each other. The Sandbox acts as a temporary staging area before promoting your changes to the production BMC Asset dataset. Because users have their own Sandbox, this safety mechanism prevents them from editing instances directly used in the production. The Sandbox dataset is an overlay dataset for the BMC Asset dataset and allows you to make changes in a separate partition without changing the production data and without duplicating the entire dataset.

You must work in the Sandbox view instead of the BMC Asset view when you are making changes to CIs. When you click an instance in the display pane and select Edit or Quick Edit, you are prompted to convert the BMC Asset view into a Sandbox view.



After you finish editing instances in your Sandbox, you promote your changes to the production dataset. The Reconciliation Engine includes out-of-the-box rules to promote your changes from the Sandbox to the production dataset. Only the Reconciliation Engine can update the production BMC Asset dataset. For more information, see “Promoting changes to CIs to the BMC Asset dataset from the Sandbox” on page 88.

For example, the Sandbox (and the instances contained in it) that belongs to Allen Allbrook at Calbro Services is different from the Sandbox that belongs to Mary Mann. Allen cannot directly create, edit, or delete CIs in the BMC Asset dataset, which is reserved for production use. Instead, he would query for a CI, drag it to his Sandbox, edit the CI, and then promote his changes back to the Asset dataset.

You might see multiple computer instances in the new Sandbox view. Unless these CIs have the pencil or star icon next to them, they are production instances (and therefore exist in the BMC Asset dataset). If you create new relationship instances between them, the relationships (indicated by the star icon) are part of the Sandbox overlay dataset but the computer CIs are not. If you then run a promotion, only the relationship instances are reconciled into the Asset dataset. To view only the production instances, right-click inside the Sandbox view and then choose View as Production. The Asset view and only the production instances appear in the display pane.

You can create multiple views of the Sandbox dataset. All changes you make in a Sandbox dataset are saved in the Sandbox dataset until you decide to promote those changes to the BMC Asset dataset by clicking the Promote Sandbox Changes button in the toolbar.

When you click Promote Sandbox Changes, all of your CI changes are promoted. A reconciliation job reconciles your changes with the production instances in the BMC Asset dataset. Your edits in the Sandbox dataset are immediate. If you make a change that conflicts with a previous change, your new change overwrites it.

NOTE If you create a CI in a Sandbox view and you do not save the view, the CI is still created in the Sandbox dataset.

While the promotion is running, all instances in Sandbox views are unavailable. Only one promotion can be running at any time for all the Sandbox users in BMC Atrium CMDB. If another user has started a promotion, Atrium Explorer notifies you that a promotion is already running.

After the promotion has completed, any views with Sandbox instances that have been promoted now contain the production instances from the BMC Asset dataset.

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Using the Sandbox view and dataset

Best practice

You should review the changes that you make to your Sandbox, so that you do not accidentally promote CIs to the production BMC Asset dataset. For example, you might have saved work in several Sandbox views over the course of many days. You can review all the CIs and relationships in the Sandbox before you promote them. Right-click in the display pane and then choose Show All Sandbox Items. All the CIs and their relationships from all your personal Sandbox views are displayed. If the Sandbox includes CIs that you do not want to promote, right-click the instance in the Sandbox view and choose Discard Changes. The CI is removed from the Sandbox.

Before you begin

If you determine that you need to edit instances in the BMC Asset dataset, copy those instances to a new Sandbox view and perform the required modifications to the instances.

To use the Sandbox view and dataset

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a new or existing view for an editable dataset (for example, the Sandbox).

2 Use the Find pane to query for instances that you want to edit.

3 Select the instances and drag them to the Sandbox view.

4 Click the selected instances and select Edit or Quick Edit.

Understanding how the Sandbox view and dataset works is important when creating, editing, or deleting instances. Just because an instance appears in the Sandbox view does not mean that it exists in the Sandbox dataset—you can see both Production and Sandbox CIs in the same Sandbox view. For example, the Quick Edit action does not copy a Production CI into your Sandbox dataset until you actually save edits to it. In addition, only CIs that have been edited are promoted from the Sandbox dataset to the Asset dataset.

5 Click OK.

You can drag Production and Sandbox instances into the Sandbox view. The production instances are automatically copied to the Sandbox view as edit actions require.

For a complete list of actions you can perform inside the Sandbox, see “Display pane actions” on page 26.



Promoting changes to CIs to the BMC Asset dataset from the SandboxIn the BMC Asset dataset, values for CI attributes set in BMC Remedy Asset Management take precedence over Atrium Explorer changes to those CIs.

As a result, when using Atrium Explorer (or the topology viewer accessed from BMC Remedy IT Service Management suite), you cannot make changes in the BMC Asset dataset to values for CI attributes that were edited or set first by BMC Remedy Asset Management. This applies to all attributes for CIs that are created manually in the BMC Remedy Asset Management application. Atrium Explorer accepts your changes in the Sandbox dataset. But when you promote the changes to the BMC Asset dataset, the values set by BMC Remedy Asset Management will not be changed. Instead, use Asset forms to modify these values directly in BMC Remedy Asset Management.

Promoting changes to CIs from the Sandbox to the Asset dataset only works for:

CIs that were created outside BMC Remedy Asset Management

Attribute values that were never set or modified by the CI editor forms in BMC Remedy Asset Management

Modifying the Merge Precedence set for BMC.ASSET.SANDBOX can affect Asset integrity. Before modifying the default behavior (for example, lowering the settings to the same level as the personal Sandbox), you should carefully evaluate these changes.

Creating instancesIn BMC Atrium CMDB, most CIs are created by discovery applications, such as BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping. However, you can use Atrium Explorer to create CIs manually.

For example, you might have installed a new computer system, and you do not want to wait until the next scheduled discovery process to include that CI in BMC Atrium CMDB.

NOTE You cannot directly create CIs in the BMC Asset dataset, which is reserved for production use. To add new CIs in the BMC Asset dataset, you must create the CIs in your Sandbox dataset and promote them. Remember that the Promote Sandbox Changes button works only with the Sandbox dataset.

Best practice

If you manually create CIs in the CMDB, remember to populate key attributes with appropriate values so that the CI can be identified against discovery data. You should define conventions for manually creating CIs, including the classes to populate, the attributes to populate, and the format of attribute values.

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For example, your company's conventions for manually creating CIs might include the following:

Calbro only manually creates Computer System CIs. Calbro never manually creates CIs for components such as Operating System or Diskdrive.

Manually-created Computer System CIs must populate the HostName and Domain, or they must populate the Serial Number as configured on the Computer System.

Before you begin

Before you create an instance, you must know both the name of the class that you are instantiating and the namespace in which it resides. The classes provided with BMC Atrium CMDB in the Common Data Model (such as BMC_ComputerSystem) reside in the BMC.CORE namespace. Classes provided with other integrating BMC Software products reside in other namespaces, as should the classes that you create.

If you do not know the namespace for the class that you are instantiating, contact a BMC Atrium CMDB administrator. For more information about classes, see BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

NOTE You must be a member of a group with either the CMDB Data Change role or the CMDB Data Change All role to create instances in BMC Atrium CMDB. For more information about roles, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

To create a CI

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a new or existing view for an editable dataset (for example, the Sandbox).

NOTE You cannot directly create a CI in the BMC ASSET view. When you drag a CI class to a BMC Asset view, you are prompted to convert the view to a Sandbox view. Follow the instructions in the dialog box to create the CI in an open Sandbox view.

2 From the Classes section of the navigation pane, drag a CI class to the display pane.



A new CI of the selected type is created in the Sandbox dataset (indicated by the star icon).

NOTE When you drag a CI class to a new view, the CI is created and its name is a combination of the class name and the number one. The number is incremented by one for each additional CI that is created from the same class. However, if you close Atrium Explorer, reopen it, open the same view, and create another CI of the same class, the third CI of this class is created and its name is a combination of the class name and the number one. The numbering is reset when you close and reopen the Atrium Explorer.

For example, if you drag the BMC_ComputerSystem class to a new view, the first CI is created with BMC_ComputerSystem_1 as its name. When you create a second CI of the BMC_ComputerSystem class, the second CI is created with BMC_ComputerSystem_2 as its name. Now, if you close Atrium Explorer, reopen it, open the same view, and create another CI of the BMC_ComputerSystem class, the third CI is created with BMC_ComputerSystem_1 as its name.

3 Click the icon representing the CI, and select Edit.

If the BMC Remedy ITSM applications are installed (7.6.03 or later), Atrium Explorer opens the Asset view of the instance. For example, if you edit a computer system CI, the Computer System form (AST:ComputerSystem) is displayed.

Otherwise, Atrium Explorer opens the instance in its class form. For example, if you edit a computer system CI, the BMC.CORE:BMC_ComputerSystem class form is displayed.

NOTE BMC Remedy Asset Management does not have forms for all the classes in the CDM. If no Asset view of the instance exists, Atrium Explorer opens the instance in its class form.

4 Specify the following required attributes:

WARNING Do not edit values for the InstanceId and ReconciliationIdentity attributes. BMC Atrium CMDB creates values for these attributes automatically when you save the instance, and workflow requires that these values remain unchanged.

Name The name of the instance.Short Description A description of the instance.

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5 (optional) Specify access control for this instance by using the following attributes:

For more information about permissions in BMC Atrium CMDB, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

6 (optional) Specify additional attribute values for the instance in the General, Specifications, or Custom tabs.

For more information about the class attributes, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

NOTE If you assign the Yes value to the isVirtual attribute in the Custom tab of a CI created from a BMC class, Atrium Explorer displays the CI’s icon enclosed in a brown rectangle. The brown rectangle enables you to quickly identify CIs running as virtual machines.

If you add the isVirtual attribute to a CI of a custom class, you can add the isVirtual attribute to the list of tooltip attributes for that class. For more information about defining tooltips for a class, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

7 Click Save.

8 Click Close.

Because no corresponding CI exists in the BMC Asset dataset until after you promote the new CI, the star icon next to the CI does not change to a pencil icon in the Sandbox view.

9 If you are finished working in the Sandbox dataset and are ready to promote changes to the BMC Asset dataset, click Promote Sandbox Changes in the toolbar.

For more information, see “Promoting instances” on page 100.

Creating relationships between CIsIn BMC Atrium CMDB, most relationships between CIs are created in bulk discovery applications, such as BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping. However, you can use the Atrium Explorer to create relationships manually between CIs.

For example, you might enhance your service model by relating business service CIs to physical CIs. You might also create relationships between CIs that were created manually through the Atrium Explorer.

CMDBRowLevelSecurity The groups and roles that have permission to view this instance.

CMDBWriteSecurity The groups and roles that have permission to modify or delete this instance.



NOTE You cannot directly create relationships in the BMC Asset dataset, which is reserved for production use. To create a relationship in the BMC Asset dataset, edit the source and destination CIs in the Sandbox dataset and then create a relationship between them in the Sandbox dataset. Then, use the Promote Sandbox Changes button to merge the changes into the BMC Asset dataset.

You can create an impact relationship between two CI instances in Atrium Explorer. In an impact relationship, if the source CI (for example, a database server or computer CI that supports the technical service) is unavailable, then the technical service is impacted in some way.

Figure 3-8: Creating impact relationships between CIs

Before you relate two instances, make sure you decide on the following points:

Which relationship class you want to use to relate the two CIs. The classes available to you depend on the class of each CI.

Which CI is the source member and which is the destination member of the relationship.

For information about which CI classes can be related by a relationship class and which is the source or destination member, see the More Information tab of the Class Manager component of BMC Atrium CMDB, which shows recommended relationship classes and all possible relationship classes for a CI class. For more information about Class Manager, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide. For more information about classes, see BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

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NOTE You must be a member of a group with either the CMDB Data Change role or the CMDB Data Change All role to create instances in BMC Atrium CMDB. For more information about roles, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

NOTE When you create CI and relationship instances, BMC recommends that you follow the best practices outlined in the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Modeling Guide. The out-of-the-box queries assume that CI and relationship instances have been created following the best-practice guidelines in this guide. If you do not follow these best practices while creating CI and relationship instances, the out-of-the-box queries might ignore these instances while displaying the results list.

To create a relationship

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a new or existing view for an editable dataset.

2 In the toolbar, click Topology View to make sure that the view is displayed as a topology, and not as a table.

3 Add the CIs that you want to relate to the view.

See “Working with related CIs” on page 74 for more information.

4 In the toolbar, click Create Relationship Mode to turn on the create relationship mode.

5 Select a relationship type from the Choose Relationship Type list (for example, Component).

NOTE To create a generic relationship that has impact, you can select Impact Relationship as a “short cut” relationship type. The Impact Relationship type sets the HasImpact attribute to Yes in the BMC_BaseRelationship class. For more information, see Table 3-2 on page 95.



6 In the display pane, click and drag the relationship line from the source CI to the destination CI, and then release the mouse button.

A relationship instance is created between the CIs.

Figure 3-9: Creating a new relationship with two CIs

The star icon displayed between the CIs indicates that you created a new Component relationship in the Sandbox dataset. In addition, the purple arrow icon indicates the direction of the impact relationship from the source CI to the destination CI.

NOTE The two CIs shown in Figure 3-9 do not display a special status icon (for example, the pencil icon). This is a visual indication to you that they exist in the Sandbox view only as copies of corresponding CIs from the BMC Asset dataset; they do not exist in the Sandbox dataset. For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.

7 Click Create Relationship Mode to turn off the create relationship mode.

8 Right-click the relationship line, and then select Edit.

The selected class form appears in a new window. For example, if you are creating an instance of the BMC.CORE:BMC_Component class, the BMC.CORE:BMC_Component form appears.

9 On the Relationship tab of the class form, verify the information for the source and destination CIs.

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10 Specify the following attributes (as needed):

WARNING Do not edit values for the InstanceId and ReconciliationIdentity attributes. BMC Atrium CMDB creates values for these attributes automatically when you save the instance, and workflow requires that these values remain unchanged.

11 (optional) Specify additional details for the instance in the General, Specifications, or Custom tabs.

For example, you can increase the ImpactWeight to 400, so that you can model the impact to the business service if a particular provider is unavailable. For more information about manually creating impact models of services, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

For more information about the class attributes, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Data Model Help.

Table 3-2: Relationship attributes

Attribute Description

Name The name of the new instance. When populating the Name attribute of relationships, use only the values in the Relationship Normalization table of Mapping Your Data to BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Classes. These values make your data compatible with future versions of BMC Software products and future products will enforce these values. For example, when you are creating a Dependency relationship where a Business Service is dependent on another CI, the name of the relationship should be SERVICEDELIVEREDBY.

CMDBRowLevelSecurity (General tab)

The groups and roles that have permission to view this instance. For more information about permissions, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

CMDBWriteSecurity (General tab)

The groups and roles that have permission to modify or delete this instance. For more information about permissions, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

HasImpact (Custom tab)

Yes specifies that the relationship instance has impact characteristics that are defined and active.

ImpactDirection(Custom tab)

Specifies the Impact direction. You can set the attribute to:

Source-DestinationDestination-Source OtherUnknown

For impact relationship instances, the default value is Source-Destination.



12 Click Save.

13 Click Close.

14 Refresh the view in Atrium Explorer.

Because no corresponding relationship exists in the BMC Asset dataset until after you promote the new relationship, the star icon next to the relationship does not change to a pencil icon in the Sandbox view.

If you set the HasImpact and ImpactDirection attributes, the impact relationship and its direction are indicated by the purple arrow.



Editing instancesUsually, changes to CIs and their relationships are reflected in BMC Atrium CMDB instances automatically after discovery, normalization, and reconciliation processes have completed. However, you can also edit instances manually.

For example, if you reassign a computer system to a new employee, you might want to update the instance for that CI in BMC Atrium CMDB to show the new owner.

NOTE You cannot directly edit instances in the BMC Asset dataset, which is reserved for production use. When you click an instance in the display pane and select Edit or Quick Edit, the BMC Asset view is converted into a Sandbox view.

To edit instances

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a view for an editable dataset (for example, the Sandbox).

2 Add the instances that you want to edit to the view.

You can query for instances as described in “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48, or you can open an existing view containing the instances you want to edit as described in “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77.

CIs from the Production dataset added to the Sandbox do not display a special status icon (for example, the pencil icon). This is a visual indication to you that they exist in the Sandbox view only as copies of corresponding CIs from the BMC Asset dataset; they do not exist in the Sandbox dataset. For more information, see “Using the Sandbox view and dataset” on page 85.

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3 In the display pane, perform one of the following actions:

Action Steps

Perform a quick edit of common attributes

1 Click an instance and select Quick Edit.Quick Edit temporarily copies the instance to the Sandbox view but it is not yet in the actual dataset. After you edit the instance, the instance then becomes part of the Sandbox dataset. The pencil icon next to the instance indicates the CI has been edited in the Sandbox dataset while a corresponding copy of the CI exists in the BMC Asset dataset.If you cancel the Quick Edit action, the pencil icon does not appear next to the instance.

2 In the dialog box, enter new values and then click OK.By default, you can perform a quick edit of the name and short description. Administrators can configure different attributes to appear. For more information about configuring the attributes available for quick editing, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Edit attributes 1 Click an instance and select Edit.Edit immediately copies the instance to the Sandbox view and dataset. The pencil icon next to the instance indicates the CI has been edited in the Sandbox dataset while a corresponding copy of the CI exists in the BMC Asset dataset (even if you cancel the Edit action).

If the BMC Remedy ITSM applications are installed (7.6.03 or later), the Asset view of the instance appears. For example, if you edit a computer system CI, the Computer System form (AST:ComputerSystem) is displayed.Otherwise, the instance appears in its class form. For example, if you edit a computer system CI, the BMC.CORE:BMC_ComputerSystem class form is displayed.

2 Modify the attribute values as needed, and then click Save.You cannot revert your edits inside the Sandbox view. You must open the instance in the Asset or class form, and then manually restore the changes.

3 Click OK. Adding impact to relationship instances

1 Double-click a relationship instance.2 In the Quick Editor, update the following attributes:

Short Description—Type a description of the relationship.HasImpact—Select Yes.ImpactDirection—Select the direction (for example, Source-Destination or Destination-Source).

3 Click OK. The purple arrow icon now displays the direction of the impact relationship from the source CI to the destination CI.



WARNING Do not edit the InstanceId and ReconciliationIdentity attributes. BMC Atrium CMDB workflow requires that these values remain unchanged.



Deleting instancesWhen you manually delete a CI from the database in Atrium Explorer, all relationships associated with that CI are also deleted. When you run a promotion, deleting the computer CI deletes the two relationships to the operating system and the monitor. But by default, deleting the source CI does not delete the destination CIs.

Figure 3-10: Deleting CI and relationships

NOTE You cannot directly delete instances in the BMC Asset dataset, which is reserved for production use. To delete an instance in the BMC Asset dataset, you must first convert the Asset view to a Sandbox view. You then can delete it in the Sandbox dataset. The instance is marked as deleted, or soft deleted, and appears in the view with the Deleted icon. Then, use the Promote Sandbox Changes button to merge the changes into the BMC Asset dataset. After the changes are merged, run a reconciliation job with the Purge activity to physically delete only instances that have been marked as deleted, or soft deleted. For more information about the Purge activity, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

Deleting the Computer System CI deletes the two relationships to the Operating System and the Monitor, but not the CIs

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However, if Cascade Delete is enabled for the relationships, deleting a source CI cascades down to destination CIs. When you delete a source CI of a Cascade Delete relationship, the destination CI of the relationship and all destinations of relationships below it are deleted when the source CI is deleted. Administrators can only enable Cascade Delete in relationship classes that follow weak relationships, or that follow 1-to-1 or 1-to-many cardinality. For more information about cascading delete, see the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Concepts and Planning Guide.

Reconciliation jobs should automatically purge instances from BMC Atrium CMDB when the CIs that those instances represent are deleted from their dataset. If reconciliation jobs miss an instance that should be deleted, you can delete that instance manually through the Atrium Explorer. For more information about reconciliation jobs, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

If you use Atrium Explorer to delete an underlying CI related to BMC Remedy IT Service Management records—for example, a CI related to a change request in BMC Remedy Change Management—the CI status is automatically propagated to the consuming applications. You do not need to clean up broken CI relationships and associations in consuming BMC Software applications.

To delete instances

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a view for an editable dataset (for example, the Sandbox).

2 Add the instances that you want to delete to the view.

You can query for instances as described in “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48, or you can open an existing view containing the instances you want to edit as described in “Creating, saving, copying, or deleting views” on page 77.

3 In the display pane, select one or more instances you want to delete.

4 Click the selected instances and select Delete from Database.

The instance is marked as deleted, or soft deleted, and appears in the view with the Deleted icon.

NOTE The Delete from Database command determines whether the selected instance should be marked as deleted (soft deleted) or deleted from the dataset (hard deleted). For example, if you create a CI in the Sandbox view, click the CI, and then select Delete from Database, the CI is deleted from the Sandbox dataset (hard deleted) and removed from the view. However, if you are working in a BMC Asset view that has been converted to a new Sandbox view, and you click the CI and then you select Delete from Database, the CI is marked as deleted (soft deleted) and appears in the view with the Deleted icon.

5 In the confirmation dialog box, click OK.





Promoting instancesAfter you create new instances, modify instances, or delete instances in the Sandbox dataset, you must promote those changes to the production BMC Asset dataset.

NOTE In the Sandbox dataset, if you make changes to an attribute and another dataset with higher merge precedence has provided a value for this attribute, your changes to the attribute are not promoted. For more information, see the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Concepts and Planning Guide and the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

To run a promotion

1 In Atrium Explorer, when you are finished working in the Sandbox dataset and are ready to promote changes to the BMC Asset dataset, click Promote Sandbox Changes in the toolbar.

The Promote Sandbox Changes button works only with the Sandbox dataset.

2 In the Promotion Preview Dialog, filter which instances to view.

Figure 3-11: Promotion Preview Dialog

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The Promotion Preview Dialog enables you to view details of CI and relationship instances before you promote them to the BMC Asset dataset.

NOTE If you create a CI in the Sandbox dataset, click the CI and select Edit, and set the MarkAsDeleted attribute to Yes, the CI appears in the Promotion Preview Dialog as a newly created CI. However, if you delete the CI by clicking the CI and selecting Delete from Database, the CI is deleted and does not appear in the Promotion Preview Dialog. For more information, see “Deleting instances” on page 98.

3 Filter which actions to view.

4 Filter which attributes are displayed in the left pane.

You can easily compare instance values in the Sandbox dataset with values in the BMC Asset dataset.

a Select an instance in the left pane to see its details on the right pane.

b To compare the attribute values of the current selection between the Sandbox and BMC Asset, choose from the following actions:

5 Click Create Report to generate a report in .csv format that lists important CI and relationship details during promotion.

6 When you are finished viewing the instances and actions, click Promotion to promote these instances to the BMC Asset dataset, or click Cancel.

Show > CIs and Relationships

Shows all the instances to be promoted.

Show > CIs Shows only the CI instances to be promoted.Show > Relationships Shows only the relationship instances to be

promoted

Show > All Actions Shows all the instances to be promoted.Show > New Shows only the newly created instances. These

instances exist only in the Sandbox dataset.Show > Changed Shows only the instances that have been changed.

These instances have been promoted previously but require changes before being promoted again.

Show > Deleted Shows only the instances that have been deleted. Marked as deleted in the BMC Asset dataset is set to false and Marked as deleted in the Sandbox dataset is set to true.

Show > All Attributes Compares all attribute values of an instance. Show > Edited Attributes Compares only those attribute values that have

changed.



After the Promotion run, the status icons (for example, the star that indicates a new CI) are no longer displayed next to the instances in Atrium Explorer. This is a visual indication to you that the instances exist only in the Sandbox view but not in the Sandbox dataset.

Identifying instancesYou can manually identify instances that were not identified automatically as part of a reconciliation job. For more information about identifying instances, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Normalization and Reconciliation Guide.

Comparing CI and relationship instancesAt any given time, BMC Atrium CMDB can contain more than one instance that represents the same real-world CI. These instances normally reside in different datasets.

Figure 3-12: Comparing instances in Atrium Explorer

You can use Atrium Explorer to perform the following CI comparison tasks:

Compare two instances within a single dataset or from two different datasets.

Compare two different CIs within a single dataset by selecting both of them and clicking Compare Instances. The two instances should not represent the same physical entity.

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Compare two relationship instances.

Create a report (in .csv format) that compares CI details.

The differences between the two instances are displayed in the Compare Instances view in a results table. For example, if you suspect that two instances in the same dataset represent the same real-world CI, you can compare instances to determine which instance to delete.

To compare instances


2 In the Find section of the Atrium Explorer navigation pane, query for the instances that you want to compare from the first dataset.

3 Perform one of the following comparison methods:

The Compare Instances view appears as a results table in the display pane. The results table lists the attributes and values for the first instance.

4 Reset the query options and then query for instances from a second dataset.

5 Drag an instance from the results list to the results table.

The results table now displays the attributes and values for both instances.

6 To view the attribute values, filter the results displayed in the Show field:

Choose Show > Differences only (the default) to display only the CI attributes that are different in the results table.

Choose Show > All attributes to display all the CI attributes in the results table.

7 To compare other instances from the same dataset, drag and drop instances from the query results list into the header table of the Compare Instances view.

The results tables lists the new comparison results.

To compare Sandbox instances with the BMC Asset dataset

You can compare Sandbox instances with the BMC Asset dataset, for example, to verify if the CIs in the Sandbox and the Asset datasets match.


2 Open a new or existing view for an editable dataset (for example, the Sandbox).

3 In the Find tab, edit the query options to include a different dataset (for example, the Sandbox).

Table 3-3: Comparing instances

Action Steps

Using the Compare Instances button

1 Select an instance from the results list.2 Click Compare Instances in the Find tab toolbar.

Using the display pane

1 Drag instances from the results list to the display pane. 2 Select an instance that you want to compare. 3 Click and then choose Compare Instances.



4 Perform a new search.

5 Drag and drop instances from the query results list into the Sandbox.

6 Edit the instances as needed.

7 In the toolbar, click Table View to see the instances as rows in a table.

8 Right-click an instance from the row and then choose Compare Against Asset Version.

The Compare Instances view appears. By default, the results table displays the different values between the Sandbox and BMC Asset instances.

To create an instance comparison report

You can create a report (in .csv format) that provides the comparison details about the instances.

1 Perform a comparison between two instances.

2 Click Create Report.

3 Select the location to create the report.

4 Save the report in .csv format.

5 Open the report and view the details for the CI attributes.

Viewing instance historyYou can view the audit history of an instance so that you can track all the changes made to that instance. The two types of auditing used when modifying a class—Copy or Log—save different information about audited instances, but are displayed the same way in the Instance History.

NOTE The Instance History is no longer available after you delete a CI in Atrium Explorer.

Before you begin

You can view history only for classes that have auditing enabled and that have at least one attribute with an Audit Option other than None (for example, Audit, Copy, or Audit & Copy).

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Figure 3-13: Instance history in Atrium Explorer

For more information about the audit feature, see the BMC Atrium Core 7.6.04 Concepts and Planning Guide and the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

To view instance history


2 Click the Find tab.

3 Perform one of the following methods to open the Instance History window:

The Instance History window then provides the history of the instance. The main section lists essential information (for example, Action, Submitter, and so on) about the audit, sorted by the date of the audit.

Table 3-4: Opening the Instance History window

Action Steps

Using the View History icon in the Find tab toolbar

1 Search for a CI. 2 Select an instance from the results list.3 Click the View History icon in the Find tab toolbar.

Using the display pane

1 Search for a CI. 2 Drag instances from the results list to the display pane. 3 (optional) Edit the instance as needed. 4 Select the instance in the display pane. 5 Click the CI menu arrow and then select View History.



4 Select a record in the table to view more details about the history.

The Instance History window displays the results of the three different audit attributes—Audit, Copy, and Audit & Copy—in various ways.

The Changed Attribute Information section lists all the attributes that are Audit or Audit & Copy enabled and were changed.

The Additional Attribute Information section lists attributes that are Copy enabled.

Table 3-5 shows the settings in the audit life cycle when you create or modify a computer system CI.

For a different view of the audit history, you can review the CMDB.DefaultAuditLog form.

5 Click Create Report.

6 Select the location to create the report.

7 Save the report in .csv format.

8 Open the report and view the audit history for the CI.

Table 3-5: Audit life cycle of a sample instance

Operation Audit attribute (Domain)

Copy attribute (Hostname)

Audit & Copy attribute (Workgroup)

Audit triggered?

Additional attribute written to Instance History

Changed attribute written

Create NULL CALBRO1 NULL Yes Hostname—CALBRO1

Domain—NULLWorkgroup—NULL

Modify calbro.com CALBRO1 NULL Yes Hostname—CALBRO1Workgroup—NULL

Domain—calbro.com

Modify attribute not enabled for audit (for example, Category)

calbro.com CALBRO-SJ NULL No Not applicable Not applicable

Modify calbro.com CALBRO-SJ IDD Yes Hostname—CALBRO-SJ

Workgroup—IDD

Delete Not available

Not available

Not available Yes Not applicable Not available

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4
Simulating the impact of changes to CIs
This section describes how to use the Atrium Impact Simulator component of BMC Atrium CMDB to determine how a change to the availability of a configuration item (CI) will affect other CIs. For example, you could run a simulation in Atrium Impact Simulator to learn what business services would be affected if you were to take a server offline.

You might also use Atrium Impact Simulator to plan for disaster recovery. You can run simulations to determine where the network is weakest, and plan accordingly.

The following topics are provided:Atrium Impact Simulator example (with Calbro Services) (page 108)Using Atrium Impact Simulator with and without BMC Service Impact Manager (page 108)Impact states in Atrium Impact Simulator (page 109)Atrium Impact Simulator interface (page 110)Running an impact simulation (page 113)Viewing CI impact from other BMC applications (page 115)Loading a saved impact simulation (page 115)Comparing impact simulations (page 116)Running a report of simulation results (page 117)Running a quick impact simulation (page 118)Opening a related change (page 119)



Atrium Impact Simulator example (with Calbro Services)

This example illustrates how Atrium Impact Simulator can help you identify how the availability of one CI can affect related CIs.

A specialist at Calbro Services has been assigned to an incident for an accounting program that is not working. He identifies that the problem is being caused by a faulty database, and determines that he must update the database and restart the server to bring the program back online.

Before he restarts the server he runs a simulation in Atrium Impact Simulator to determine the impact of restarting the server on other CIs. For example, there might be other software on the server unrelated to the problem he is trying to fix.

The results of the simulation show that restarting the server will also impact human resources software using a different, and currently functional, database on the same computer. With this knowledge, the specialist presents the problem and solution to the Emergency Change Advisory Board at Calbro Services.

Using Atrium Impact Simulator with and without BMC Service Impact Manager

The Atrium Impact Simulator can predict the impact on CIs by using the impact relationships that you configure within BMC Atrium CMDB. To define an impact relationship between two CIs, the HasImpact attribute in the BMC_Relationship relationship class must be set to Yes.

If you have the BMC Service Impact Manager (SIM) product installed, Atrium Impact Simulator can also use the impact relationships configured with the Service Model Editor (SME) of BMC SIM.

Using Atrium Impact Simulator with BMC SIMIf you have BMC SIM installed, Atrium Impact Simulator uses the impact relationships that you have configured by using the SME of BMC SIM, the impact relationships added by using Atrium Explorer, and the impact relationships that are automatically created in the BMC Atrium CMDB or imported to the BMC Atrium CMDB. In this case, you might use Atrium Impact Simulator to test different impact scenarios before deploying those scenarios in your production BMC SIM environment.

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Impact states in Atrium Impact Simulator

The following features of BMC SIM are not used with Atrium Impact Simulator:

BMC SIM schedules

Custom propagation models

Custom status computation models

Custom status states

Dynamic priorities

Using Atrium Impact Simulator without BMC SIMIf you do not have BMC SIM installed, Atrium Impact Simulator uses the impact relationships that you have created in the BMC Atrium CMDB through Atrium Explorer or through the dynamic service modeling function of the Service Catalog. For more information about creating impact relationships, see the BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 Administrator's Guide.

Impact states in Atrium Impact SimulatorWhen you run a simulation, you can specify an impact state for each CI in the simulation.

Table 4-1 lists the states that you can select in Atrium Impact Simulator (with the corresponding BMC SIM state in parentheses) and a description for each state.

When you run a simulation, Atrium Impact Simulator uses these states and the impact relationships defined between CIs to predict the corresponding impact on those CIs. For example, a simulation that includes a server with an impact state of Unavailable might return several related CIs that are predicted to be unavailable as a result of the unavailable server. However, an Impaired server in that same simulation might return impacted CIs that are predicted to be only Slightly Impaired.

Table 4-1: Impact states

Atrium Impact Simulator state Description

Slightly Impaired (Warning) The CI is delivering services normally, but some problem might affect it.

Impaired (Minor) The CI’s delivery of service is slightly affected.Very Impaired (Impacted) The CI’s delivery of service is affected.Unavailable (Unavailable) The CI has a failure and is unable to deliver service.



Atrium Impact Simulator interfaceThe BMC Atrium Impact Simulator console comprises two sections that contain information about CIs. The CIs for Simulation section lists the CIs that you want to include in a simulation. The results section provides simulation results as either a table or a graphical topology.

Figure 4-1 shows the Atrium Impact Simulator layout.

Figure 4-1: Atrium Impact Simulator layout

Shows CIs used in simulation and their simulated status

Shows topology of the simulation

110 User’s Guide

Atrium Impact Simulator interface

CIs to include in a simulationUse the CIs for Simulation section to choose the CIs to include in a simulation. You can add one or more CIs to the CIs for Simulation section, each with its own simulated impact state. Table 4-2 describes the fields and buttons in the CIs for Simulation section.

Simulations can include CIs that are instances of subclasses of BMC_BaseElement. Simulations cannot include federated CIs.

Simulation resultsThe results section lists the CIs that Atrium Impact Simulator predicts will be affected by the changes you set in the CIs for Simulation section. You can view the results of a simulation as either a topology or a table.

Topology viewThe Results in Topology view shows the results of a simulation as a topology, including any relationships between CIs. Each image in the topology represents a CI in the simulation. Each line connecting CIs represents a relationship.

An icon on each CI image represents the predicted impact state for each CI based on the simulation criteria, as shown in Table 4-3.

Figure 4-2 on page 112 shows the lines and icons in the topology view of simulation results.

Table 4-2: Fields and buttons in the CIs for Simulation section of Atrium Impact Simulator

Field or Button Description

Add CI Click to query for one or more CIs to add to the table. For more information about finding CIs, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.

Remove CI Click to remove the selected CI from the table.Refresh CIs Refreshes the list of CIs in the table. If you make changes to the

impact model, such as adding or removing an impact relationship in Atrium Explorer, click Refresh CIs to force Atrium Impact Simulator to use the updated data model for the CIs in the table.

Simulate Impact Click to run an impact simulation for the CIs in the table.

Table 4-3: Impact-state icons for simulations

Icon Predicted impact state

Slightly Impaired (Warning)

Impaired (Minor)

Very Impaired (Impacted)

Unavailable (Unavailable)



Figure 4-2: Lines and icons in the topology view of simulation results

Click View in Explorer to open the results in Atrium Explorer. By default, the Atrium Explorer navigation pane is collapsed to provide more viewing area for the topology. For more information about the capabilities of Atrium Explorer, see “Atrium Explorer interface” on page 19, and “Working with related CIs” on page 74.

NOTE If you make any changes to CIs or relationships in Atrium Explorer, such as creating a new Impact relationship between CIs, those changes are not available in Atrium Impact Simulator until after you close and then reopen Atrium Impact Simulator or you use the refresh button to requery the model and republish it.

Table viewThe Results in Table tab shows the results of a simulation as a table. Each row in the table represents an impacted CI. The Predicted State column indicates the expected impact for each CI.

By default, the Predicted State, Name, Class, and Short Description columns are included in the table. Click Change Columns to open a dialog box that enables you to add columns to or remove columns from the table. You cannot remove the Predicted State column from the table.

By default, all impacted CIs are listed in the table, including the CIs from the CIs for Simulation section. To list only impacted service CIs, click Show Services. To list all impacted CIs, click Show All Results.

Click View in Large Table to open the table in a separate, larger window. You might find a larger table useful if a simulation returns several rows of impacted CIs.

Click Report to open the Reports form, which enables you to generate BMC Remedy AR System reports for the results of a simulation. For more information about reporting simulation results, see “Running a report of simulation results” on page 117.

Icon represents predicted impact on related CIs

Line represents impact relationship between CIs

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Running an impact simulation

Related change requestsIf you have BMC Remedy Change Management installed, you can open a new change request directly from the Atrium Impact Simulator console. This enables you to take immediate action if the results of an impact simulation are acceptable. For more information about related requests, see:

“Opening a related change” on page 119

“Viewing CI impact from other BMC applications” on page 115

Running an impact simulationYou can simulate the impact that a change to one or more CIs will have on other CIs. The results of the simulation show how related CIs, such as other software on the server, are affected when you restart the server.

For example, if you have to apply the latest patch to a database and the patch installation requires the database's host computer to be restarted, you might want to simulate the impact of restarting the server.

To run an impact simulation

1 Click the Application Launcher of the BMC Atrium Core Console, and then choose Impact Simulator.

2 Add CIs to Atrium Impact Simulator by performing one of the following actions:

3 In the CIs for Simulation section of the Atrium Impact Simulator, select a CI, and then select an impact state from the list in the Simulated Status column.

Repeat this step until every row in the CIs for Simulation section has the impact state that you want to simulate.

Action Steps

Add CIs directly in Atrium Impact Simulator

1 In Atrium Impact Simulator, click Add CI.2 In the Query window, run a query that returns the CIs you

want to include in the simulation.For more information about finding CIs, see “Using the Query Builder to create a new query” on page 48.

3 From the results list, select one or more CIs, and then click OK.The selected CIs appear in the CIs for Simulation section.

Add CIs through Atrium Explorer

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a view that contains the CIs you want to include in the simulation.

2 Select one or more CIs.3 Click a highlighted CI and select Simulate Impact.

Atrium Impact Simulator opens, with the selected CIs in the CIs for Simulation section.



4 Click Simulate Impact.

When a large number of related CIs and relationships exist, a pop-up window appears, showing you the progress of the simulation. The progress display shows you the current state for the simulation. When the simulation is completed, the progress window closes automatically. Closing the progress window before the simulation is complete does not cancel the simulation.

If the results contain over 750 CIs, you are prompted to view the results either in a table, or in a table and a topology view.

5 View the results of the simulation on the Results in Topology and Results in Table tabs.

6 If you want to save this simulation, complete the following steps:

a Click Save Simulation.

b In the Save Simulation dialog box, enter a name for the simulation.

c Provide a description of the simulation, such as its purpose, and the CIs used in the simulation.

d Click OK.

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Viewing CI impact from other BMC applications

Viewing CI impact from other BMC applications

Atrium Impact Simulator is transparently integrated into other BMC applications as an integral part of their workflow. For example, from BMC Remedy Change Management, Atrium Impact Simulator exposes only the features required for the user, thereby simplifying the user experience. For more information, see the BMC Remedy Change Management User’s Guide.

Figure 4-3: Viewing CI impact from BMC Remedy Change Management

Loading a saved impact simulationIf you have saved an impact simulation, use this procedure to load that simulation and refresh the simulation results.

To load a saved impact simulation

1 Click the Application Launcher of the BMC Atrium Core Console, and then choose Impact Simulator.

2 Click Load Simulation.

3 In the Saved Simulation dialog box, select a saved simulation.



4 Click Load.

The simulation is loaded with its CIs, Simulated States, and the results from the last time that the simulation was saved.

5 Click Simulate Impact to refresh the results table.

If the impact model has changed, or the relationships between CIs in the data model have changed, the saved simulation results might not be accurate. Re-running the simulation makes sure that the results section is current.

Comparing impact simulationsYou can compare the results of any saved simulation with the simulation currently loaded. You might also compare the results of a new simulation with an older version of that same simulation to see how the results changed over time.

For example, you might compare the predicted outcomes of two different impact simulations designed to address the same plan for disaster recovery to see which scenario best suits your needs.

A comparison between two impact simulations returns the following columns for comparison:

To compare impact simulations

1 In the Atrium Impact Simulator, either create a new simulation or load a saved simulation.

2 Click Compare Simulation.

3 In the Saved Simulation dialog box, select a saved simulation to compare with the simulation you selected in step 1.

4 Click Load.

A new window displays the simulation results side by side.

Predicted Status ClassName Short Description

116 User’s Guide

Running a report of simulation results

Running a report of simulation resultsYou can save the results of a simulation as a report. For example, you can generate a web report that lists all of the services that will be impacted if a server were to be taken offline. If needed, you can then export the report in various formats (for example, Excel or PowerPoint if you create a web report, or CSV or XML if you create an AR System report).

Figure 4-4: Running a report of simulation results

Before you begin

For more information about creating and running reports, see the Report Console Help available from the BMC Remedy Mid Tier client or the BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.6.04 Mid Tier Guide.

To run a report of simulation results

1 In the Atrium Impact Simulator, either create a new simulation or load a saved simulation.

2 Click the Results in Table tab.

3 Click Report.



4 In the Report Console, select the report that you want to run.

You can click New to create a web or AR System report. You might need to click Refresh after you create a new report to view it in the list of available reports.

5 Click Run.

The report is generated to the destination you selected (for example, screen, file or printer), in the format you selected.

Running a quick impact simulationIf you simply want to view the impact results of an unavailable CI, you can run a quick impact simulation of the CI. You can expand the CI to view all related CIs and their relationships. But the full set of features available in the Atrium Impact Simulator is not available in the “streamlined” Quick Impact Simulator. For example, you cannot modify the impact status of the CI (to view the effects if the CI has Slightly Impaired impact status).

Figure 4-5: Quick Impact Simulator

To run a quick impact simulation

1 In Atrium Explorer, open a view that contains the CIs you want to include in the simulation.

2 Select a CI in the display pane.

3 Click the down arrow and select Quick Impact Simulator.

The Quick Impact Simulator opens, with the selected CI displayed. By default, the CI is displayed in the Unavailable predicted impact state.

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Opening a related change

4 Double-click the CI to view any parent and children CIs.

5 Modify the layout options as needed.

The direction option is enabled (for example, Top to Bottom display of the instances) only if you select the Layered or Hierarchic layout.

6 Close the Quick Impact Simulator when you are finished.

Opening a related changeAfter running a simulation, you might determine that the predicted results of a simulated change are acceptable. If you want to make the changes in the working environment, you can open a change request directly from Atrium Impact Simulator.

NOTE To complete this procedure, you must have the BMC Remedy Change Management application installed.

To open a related request

1 Run or load an impact simulation.

2 In the Relate to New field, select Change to open a related change request in BMC Remedy Change Management.

3 Click Relate to New.

A new form in the related application opens, ready for you to submit a request.



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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Index

Aaccessing, BMC Atrium Core Console 15Adobe Flash settings 18applications, opening 17architecture, BMC Atrium CMDB 12Atrium Explorer

CI groups 77Classes section 32creating CIs 88data, viewing 36display pane 21filtering relationships 80filters 80Find section 32Impacted Services section 30interface 19layout options 21, 83navigation pane 32opening 16options 20Properties section 29relating CIs 91relationship lines 25restricting displayed instances 80table view 20toolbar 20topology view 20viewing links 47Views section 32zoom bar 22

Atrium Impact SimulatorCalbro Services example 108impact states 109interface 110opening 17opening related requests 113, 119table view 112topology view 111using with BMC Service Impact Manager 108using without BMC Service Impact Manager 109

Atrium Integration Engine, opening 17

audits, viewing instance history 104

BBMC Asset dataset

promoting changes from Sandbox 88promoting changes to 86using 85

BMC Atrium Corebuild number 14version number 14

BMC Atrium Core Consoleaccessing 15applications and tools 16closing 14logging out 14opening 13opening applications 17toolbar 14

BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping, relating CIs 88, 91

BMC Atrium Product Catalog, opening 17BMC Remedy AR System forms, finding instances 70BMC Remedy Change Management, opening a

request from Atrium Impact Simulator 113, 119BMC Service Impact Manager (SIM), using with

Atrium Impact Simulator 108BMC Software, contacting 2BMC_Genealogy relationship, clone 26build number, BMC Atrium Core 14

Cchange requests, opening related from AIS 119choose filter 74CI groups 77CI instances, See configuration itemsCIs, See configuration itemsClass Manager, opening 16Classes section 32clone, BMC_Genealogy relationship 26

Index 121


closing BMC Atrium Core Console 14Component relationship 26conditions, query 44configuration items

changes to CIs, promoting to Asset Dataset from Sandbox 88

creating 88expanding 30, 37isVirtual attribute 91relating 91viewing 74virtual computers 23, 91

copying queries 69Create Relationship Mode button 21creating

CIs 88filters 80relationships between CIs 91

customer support 3

Ddata

federated, viewing 46querying BMC Atrium CMDB 35viewing 36

datasets, Sandbox and BMC Asset 85Dependency relationship 25discovery applications

creating CIs 88relating CIs 91

Display buttons 20display pane

actions 26, 28views of dataset 21

documentation 7

Eediting

instances 96queries 68

Element Location relationship 25expanding CIs 30

Ffederated data, viewing 46Federation Manager

opening 16viewing links in Atrium Explorer 47

Filter dialog box 81filters

creating 80described 80using 80

Find section 32Find tab

interface 38toolbar 39

finding instancesBMC Remedy AR System forms, using 70BMC Remedy ITSM forms, using 70saved query 40

GGroup relationship 25groups, CI 77

Iidentifying instances 102Impact relationship 26impact simulations

CIs, including 111comparing 116impact states 109loading 115quick, running 118results 111running 113running from other applications 115

impact states 109Impacted Services section 30instance history, viewing 104InstanceId 90, 95, 98instances

See also configuration itemscomparing 102deleting 98display options, configuring 33editing 96finding 41identifying 102promoting 100relating CIs 91

isVirtual attribute, configuration items 91

122 User’s Guide


Llayout options

applying 83overview 21

logging out BMC Atrium Core Console 14

MMember of Collection relationship 25

Nnavigation pane 32Normalization Manager, opening 16

Oonline help, about 14Open Launch in Context Menu button 20opening, BMC Atrium Core Console 13Options button 20options, Atrium Explorer 20

PPartial group relationship 25personal queries 46popup

CIs and relationships, viewing 75configuring 33filtered CIs in virtual relationship, viewing 76

product support 3Promote Sandbox Changes button 21promoting

changes to BMC Asset 86instances 100

Promotion Preview Dialoginstance details, viewing 101viewing instance details prior to promotion 100

Properties section 29

Qqueries

about 41conditions 44copying 69editing 68options 69parameters 45

queries (continued)personal 46Query Builder, using 48relational-algebra formatting 44sample 40saved 40shared 46structure 43variable conditions 45

Query Builderadvanced queries, creating 55folding rules, creating 60nested folding rules, creating 65queries, creating new 48simple queries, creating 50

quick impact simulation, running 118

RReconciliation Manager, opening 16ReconciliationIdentity 90, 95, 98relating CIs 91relational-algebra formatting 44relationship lines 25relationships

adding to CIs 21filtering 80viewing 74

reports of instance comparison 104Run Layout button 21, 83

Ssample queries 40Sandbox dataset

changes to CIs, promoting to Asset dataset 88instances, editing 87using 85

saved queries 40Service Catalog, opening 16shared queries 46simulations, See impact simulationssoft deleted 99support, customer 3

Index 123


Ttable view 20technical support 3toolbar, BMC Atrium Core Console 14topology

resizing 23view 20

Vversion number, BMC Atrium Core 14viewing instance details prior to promotion,

Promotion Preview Dialog 100viewing online help 14views

copying 77creating 77deleting 77saving 77saving as an image 79

Views section 32virtual computers, configuration items 23, 91Virtual relationship 25

Zzoom bar

Zoom Fit 23Zoom In 23Zoom Out 23

124 User’s Guide

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176782_CMDB7.6.04_UsersGuide

Documents

bmc remedy itsm

atrium impact simulator

quick impact simulator

bmc atrium cmdb

data transfer integrations

atrium explorer opens

external data stores

bmc atrium discovery