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Working with Dependency Mapping

•About Dependency Mapping

•About Using the CI Map Tree Tab

•Automated Dependency Mapping

•Using the CI Map Button

About Dependency Mapping

Dependency mapping allows you to see whether and how a device is connected to other devices on the network. You can view dependencies and understand how an outage of one device will affect others on the network. You can view mappings in one or more of the following ways depending on the device and on your implementation. See also Working with the CI MapWorking with the CI Map, and Working with Inventory Setting Quick Actions.

About Using the CI Map Tree Tab

Each configuration item type has an associated CI Map Tree tab. For example, a switch has a CI Switch Map Tree tab, a database has a CI Database Map Tree tab, and so on. Use this tab to link and unlink connected devices. After you connect the devices, you create a visual map that can be viewed and used as follows:

1.Open the tab to view the downstream and upstream connections for the devices listed. For example, a virtual machine host should list all of the guests.

2.Link or unlink devices by selecting them and clicking the Linkor Unlink buttons. You can also right-click a listed device and select an option.

3.Select Link to open the link dialog box where you can specify available relationships and search from the configuration items for the type of device to link.

•Downstream links specify devices connected to the selected configuration item.

• Upstream links specify which device this configuration item connects to.

Once this is completed, you can use the CI Map button to view these relationships and outage impacts as seen in Using the CI Map Button.

Automated Dependency Mapping

ISM Discovery can find and automatically map or link configuration items connected to two types of assets.

•Switches: LanProbe (available through the Windows client agent, gateway, and gateway data center edition) can discover switches in the network using SNMP (V1, V2, V3) protocols. By scanning a switch, it also discovers the relationships between the switch ports and the MAC addresses. The SNMP protocols settings are configured from the inventory settings. See Creating a New Community String and Creating an SNMP Query for more information. The port connections for a switch are captured in the Port Connections tab of the switch configuration item. When processing the message, the asset processor searches for any assets with matching MAC addresses and automatically create and maps the downstream assets. It automatically creates a configuration item map for any assets connected to that switch. The results can be viewed in the CI Switch Map Tree tab.

•Guests for each VM host: On Windows, if the audit machine is a virtual machine host, (VMWare, Hyper-V) the client agent also discovers all the guest virtual machines located on the host. The dependency mappings for the guest virtual machines to the virtual machine host are listed in the Host or Guest tabs and can be viewed using the Map Tree tab.

From the data center edition gateway, VMHA (Virtual Machine Host Auditor) can scan remote VMware ESX or vCenter servers and discover relevant hosts and guests on Windows platforms. You can view the guest and host connections using the Map Tree tab.

Using the CI Map Button

1.Log into the Service Desk Console.

2.Open the CI workspace.

3.Open a configuration item.

4.On the Details tab, click CI Map. This opens a window with a visual representation centered on the item you selected.

5.From the visual view you can see the type of devices that are connected, such as all guests connected to a virtual machine host or all devices connected to a switch. Each device has a header that declares the device type and a description area that contains the device name.

Use this view to do the following:

•Right-click on a device to centralize and redraw the map. This moves the focus and redraws the map to show you which items are connected to the selected device.

•Right-click a device such as a server or switch and select Show outage impact to see how an outage of the device impacts the network. Select Hide outage impact to hide the impact map.

•If the device displays a symbol such as a caution or warning, hover over the symbol to see a list of incidents, problems, or changes connected with that device.

•Open the configuration item for a device by clicking on the link.

•Move the item on the map page by clicking and dragging from the header.

•View up to five levels of connections by selecting a level from the drop-down list.

•Change the view to vertical or horizontal from the View Options > Layout drop-down list.