In an enterprise, a service is an entity that provides an useful function to the end-users. For example, EMail, ERP, CRM applications, online banking, online store, online stock trading, etc. Typically, when any of these services are being used, some common issues faced by the users are:
Availability of a service.
Completion of critical activities like accessing email, viewing stock quotes, buying / selling stocks, etc.
You can solve these issues by defining one or more service models that represent the business functions or applications that run in your enterprise. You can define these service models by creating one or more service tests that simulate common end-user functionality. Using these service tests, you can measure the performance and availability of critical business functions, receive alerts when there is a problem, identify common issues and diagnose causes of failures. Monitoring a service helps you ensure that your operational goals and service level agreements are met.
A service is supported by one or more underlying system components in the data center. For example, hosts, databases, application servers etc. A system is a logical grouping of targets that collectively host one or more services. The targets within a system can have relationships or associations with each other. A system can support one or more services. You can define associations between various system components and use the Topology Viewer to view the relationships between the components. For more information, refer to About Using Topology Viewer.
You can monitor a service by defining the following:
Availability: Indicates whether a service is available to its end-users at a given point in time. Service level agreements typically require a service be available at least for a minimum percentage of time.
Performance: Response time experienced by users accessing the service. When service performance is poor, availability of the service may be affected. It is possible to have multiple response time measurements if the service access involves multiple steps or the service provides multiple business functions. Performance is also based on the performance of underlying system components that constitute a service. For example, time taken to send email, connect to the server, etc.
Usage: Indicates the level of user activity on a service. Service usage could be directly related to service performance. If performance of a service seems slow, it may be due to high usage of the service. The administrator can review the usage data to diagnose performance issues and respond accordingly.
You can define different types of service models based on your requirement. Some of the types of service models that you can define are:
Generic Service: A Generic Service is the simple service model you can create in Enterprise Manager. You can define one or service models by defining service tests that represent a critical business function.
Aggregate Service: A service can be logically combined with other services to form an Aggregate Service. Each low level service can be an aggregate service or a generic service itself. An aggregate service must contain at least one service. The availability, performance and usage of an aggregate service are determined by the availability, performance and usage of its constituent services.
Web Application: You can also define a special type of service known as Web Application service to monitor Web transactions. For more information, refer to About Web Application Management.
You can define other service models based on your requirement.
Related Topics
About Web Application Management
About SystemsEnterprise Manager Information Roadmap
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