You can use Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to filter a set of events to determine the cause of a higher level system, service, or application problem. RCA can help you to eliminate apparent performance problems that may otherwise appear to be root causes but which are only side effects or symptoms of the actual root cause of the problem, allowing you to more quickly identify problem areas. You can view the RCA results on the home page or topology page of any service that is currently down. The topology page allows you to see a graphical representation of the service, system and component dependencies with the target(s) highlighted that RCA has implicated as causing the service failure.
Root Cause Analysis considers the availability status of a key component to determine whether or not it is a cause of service failure. Optionally, you can specify additional conditions, or component tests, for Root Cause Analysis to consider. RCA will then consider the component a cause of the service failure if either the component is unavailable or if any of the component tests conditions are not met.
Use the Select Metric page to select the metric you want to use to create the condition for Root Cause Analysis to consider when evaluating this key component for the cause of the service failure. The metric you select is added to the Component Test page where you can define the object against which to apply the metric and the threshold to be set.
Select a metric and click Continue to add the metric to the Component Test page.
You use these metrics in conjunction with both the availability of the the target itself and a selection of the component tests you define against that target. Once the metrics are defined, the status of the target during root cause analysis depends not only on the status of the target, but also on the status of the component tests performed against that target. If the service fails and if the key component fails or if tests fail then RCA will implicate the failed component or test a possible root cause.
If you specify a fault threshold for a component test included in the dependency topology, RCA is driven only by an alert on the metric if you indicate that RCA should use the critical severity threshold for the test. If you specify your own fault threshold, then RCA evaluates the test not by looking for a severity, but rather by comparing the last collected value against the threshold.
Note: You may define a component test for any target that is a key component of the system on which a service runs for any subservice of an aggregate service.
Related Topics
About Root Cause Analysis Processing
Getting the Most From Root Cause Analysis
Enterprise Manager Information Roadmap
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