Business Application discovery and mapping with TADDM 7.2.1

In IBM® Tivoli® Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM) v7.2.1 you can use the Grouping Composer feature to define Business Services, Business Applications and Collections. Business Applications and Collections may even be defined dynamically, so that they are populated in a dynamic way based on the information that is available in the TADDM database. When new resources are discovered, or dormant resources are removed, the Business Application or Collections are automatically updated.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the reader with the basic understanding of how to discover and define Business Applications. In addition the paper includes a thorough discussion of dynamic application definition using MQL Rules, and recommendations on how to automate application mapping using application patterns.

The first half, starting at 3 Discovering the business application components on page 15, introduces discovery, static application definition, and exploring application topologies. In addition, basic concepts such as dependencies and relationships are discussed.

The second half of the paper, starting at 6 Business application definition using relationships on page 54, is dedicated to dynamic application based on rules. When reading this section you are expected to understand the basics of application definitions, and have a good understanding of the Common Data Model as well. In this section you will find sample MQL queries that can be used to associate different types of resources with your business application.

As you will see, MQL rules are highly reusable, so in 7 Automating application mapping on page 98 it is discussed how you can refine and manipulate the information in the TADDM database to help automate the application definition process.

This paper is a revised reprint of a hands-on exercise used at the Pulse 2013 conference. For that reason most of the information is worded as instructions on how to use and manipulate TADDM to produce certain results in a controlled environment. It is the hope of the author that you can use these instructions to replicate the scenarios in your own environment. The first two sections of the paper introduce the exercise environment, and describes the application environment that is discovered and mapped in the exercises.

To familiarize yourself with the discovered environment, please read sections 2 through 2.6 so you understand what you would have experienced had you attended the Pulse conference.

It is the hope of the author that you will find the information in this paper useful - even though you do not have access to the exercise environment, and therefore cannot reproduce the exact results as they are described in the this paper. If you have any comments or questions, please do not hesitate to contact the author.

Business_Application_Discovery_and_Mapping_with_TADDM_7.2.1.pdf