Defining business criticality

You can define the levels of business criticality for your applications (services), resource groups and resources, and then view a list of them on the Business criticality page. These set definitions can then be assigned to an application (or resource/resource group).

Before you begin

As an administrator user, you define the business criticality values that can then be assigned to an application (or resource/resource group).

You do so using the Business criticality page, accessed from the Topology configuration page.

When you subsequently create or edit an application (or resource/resource group), you can choose from the defined options to set the business criticality. This allows you to dynamically set different alert severity or incident priority levels, depending on the business criticality you have set.

Procedure

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

  2. From the main navigation, click Resource management.

  3. From the Settings drop-down, click Topology configuration, then click Configure on the Business criticality card. The Business criticality page is displayed listing any existing criticality definitions in a table format by name, description, and criticality value, in sortable columns.

    Tips: To reduce the number of items displayed in the table, use the Filter table text field. The table is filtered as you enter the search text. To reload the items displayed, which can be useful if other users are customizing them, click Refresh (top right).

    From here, you can perform the following actions:

    • Sort the table of defined criticality definitions by column header.
    • Delete existing definitions by selecting one or more in the table and clicking Delete business criticality definition(s). Caution: Deleting a criticality affects any resource, group or application to which this criticality has been assigned.
    • Edit an existing definition by selecting it in the table, then clicking Edit business criticality definition.
    • Create a new business criticality.
    • Start with the default criticalities (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3).

  4. Click the Define criticality + button to create a new criticality definition, click Start with presets (then Add), or click the pencil icon next to an existing definition to edit it.

  5. Enter or edit a name (required), and description (optional).

    Tip: Use names that reflect your business needs, and that quickly identify the level of importance, for example Tier 1, Level C, and so on.

  6. Enter a criticality value, either by typing a number between 1 and 100, or by using the + (plus) and - (minus) buttons to select a numerical value.

    Important: The higher the value you specify for the business criticality, the more important it is when assigned to an application (or resource/resource group).

  7. Click Save (or Define). The business criticality definitions are saved and listed on the Business criticality page.

Criticality values can now be assigned to applications (or resources/resource groups) from the Resource management page or while viewing an application.