Viewing topology history

Before you begin

You must have an existing topology. For more information about rendering a topology, see Rendering (visualizing) a topology.

Procedure

1. Log in to the IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps console.

2. From the main navigation, expand Operate and click Topology viewer.

3. Search for the topology that you want to view. From the results, find the resource or group for the topology you want to view. Click View topology.

Note When viewing a topology, you can click View Legend to open a Help panel that describes the topology's visual elements.

You can display and refine the topology history in a number of ways:

• Delta mode

  You can enable and disable delta by using the Delta toggle in the topology navigation toolbar.

  When Delta mode is On, differences in topology are displayed as purple plus or minus symbols next to the affected resource.

  When Delta mode is On with History mode On, you can compare two time points to view differences in topology. Historical change indicators (blue dots) are displayed next to each affected resource.

  Note: For efficiency reasons, historical change indicators are only displayed for topologies with fifty or fewer resources. You can decrease, but not increase, this default by changing the Historical Change Threshold. For more information, see Defining advanced topology settings.

  • Lock time pin

    On the timeline graph, click the Lock icon on a time pin's head to lock a time point in place as a reference point for the comparison. You can then use the second time slider to view topology changes in comparison to the locked point in time.

  • Compare resource properties

    Click Resource details on a resource's context menu to compare the resource's data at the two selected time points. You can view and compare the property names and values in table format, or raw JSON format.

• History timeline

  You open the Topology History toolbar using the Timeline toggle in the Topology Visualization toolbar (on the left).

  Note: Resources with a large amount of history may take longer to display.

  You use the time pins to control the topology shown. When you move the pins, the topology updates to show the current topology representation.

  While in delta mode you can move both pins to show a comparison between the earliest pin and the latest. The timeline shows the historic changes for a single selected resource, which is indicated in the timeline title. You can lock one of the time pins in place to be a reference point.

  When you first display the history timeline, coach marks (or tooltips) are displayed, which contain helpful information about the timeline functionality. You can scroll through these, or switch them off (or on again) as required.

  To view the timeline for a different resource, you click it, and the heading above the timeline changes to display the name of the selected resource. If you click the heading, the topology centers (and zooms into) the selected resource.

  The history timeline is displayed above a secondary time bar, which displays a larger time segment and indicates how much of it is depicted in the main timeline. You can use the jump buttons to move back and forth along the timeline, or jump to the current time.

  You can use the time picker, which opens a calendar and clock, to move to a specific second in time.

  To view changes made during a specific time period, use the two time sliders to set the time period. You can zoom in and out to increase or decrease the granularity using the + and - buttons on the right, or by double-clicking within a timeframe. The most granular level you can display is an interval of 1 second. The granularity is depicted with time indicators and parallel bars, which form buckets that contain the recorded resource change event details.

  The timeline displays changes to a resource's state, properties, and its relationships with other resources. These resource changes are displayed through color-coded bars and dash lines, and are elaborated on in a tooltip displayed when you hover over the change.

  You can exclude one or more of these elements from displaying:

  • Relationships

    This toggle displays or hides the number of relationships with neighboring resources, and whether the relationships were changed. Examples of this include the removal or addition of a relationship, or the modification of an existing relationship.

  • State

    This toggle displays or hides the number of resource state changes that a resource has undergone.

  • Property

    This toggle displays or hides the number of times that resource properties were changed. Each time that at least one property was changed is displayed as one property change event regardless of whether one or more properties were changed at the time.