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Function documentationService Availability Management

 

Service Availability Management (SAM) reports SLA-relevant downtimes of managed objects (technical systems on which business-critical business transactions are performed, for example) based on data which is adjusted by system administrators to match the end user experience. The data is confirmed by IT service managers or other supervisors. The adjusted downtime data is called service outages. SAP Solution Manager can be the single source of truth for Service Level Agreement (SLA) reporting of system downtimes.

Basic Functioning

With SAM, confirmed service outages are created by a combination of automatic and manual activities:

  • SAM creates service outages automatically, based on the unplanned downtimes, as reported by the SAP Solution Manager Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure (MAI).

  • To adjust the measured data automatically, SAM takes into account the planned downtimes, as defined in the SAP Solution Manager Work Mode Management (WMM). SAM regards planned downtimes as not SLA-relevant. Planned downtimes are planned in advance, and agreed between the customer and the service provider.

  • To decide whether a service outage is SLA-relevant, SAM matches the service outages with the agreed service times, the promised availability during service times as agreed in an SLA contract, for example according to a 24/7 or 10/5 schema.

  • To SAM be able to compute the actual SLA-relevant availability of managed objects, SAM allows you to adjust the data manually. Depending on the use case, you have the following options:

    • Change a service outage automatically generated by MAI

      Example Example

      A database failure causes a downtime: Depending on the MAI data collection intervals, the start and end of a measured downtime can be different from the real start and end time, as experienced by the end user. When the status of an availablity alert changes from red to green, the system administrator is notified via e-mail and asked to change the service outage and adjust the maintenance time.

      End of the example.

      Example Example

      A downtime is caused by a new application program producing extraordinary system load. The system administrator of a service provider identifies the root cause and agrees with the end user to regard the service outage as not SLA-relevant, because the IT infrastructure department is not responsible for the issue.

      End of the example.
    • Create new service outages to compensate for missing MAI measurements

      Example Example

      For SAP Solution Manager a system which is located in the same local network, is available, but it is not available to the end user, due to a network connection breakdown between the system and the end users. On request of the end user, the system administrator creates an SLA-relevant service outage manually and informs the end user via e-mail that the service outage has been created.

      End of the example.
    • Change a service outage automatically generated by WMM or MAI, and/or create a new service outage manually

      Example Example

      The system administrator responsible for 24/7 service assumes that a maintenance activity will consume more time than agreed with the end users, which was 4 hours, for example. To avoid alerts being generated during the maintenance, in the work mode management (WMM) the system administrator extends the planned downtime, to 6 hours, for example. After the maintenance is finished, the system administrator is notified to enter the real start and end time of the maintenance activity in SAM. Depending on the actual time consumed, the system administrator does the following:

      • Less than agreed (3 hours, for example): A service outage is created automatically, based on the data from WMM, and a notification is sent. The system administrator adjusts the service outage to the 4 hours agreed planned downtime.

      • More than agreed, but less than defined in the work mode management (5 hours, for example): The system administrator adjusts the service outage created automatically, based on the data from work mode management, to 4 hours. For the additional hour, the system administrator creates a new service outage for the SLA-relevant unplanned downtime, manually.

      • More than defined in the work mode management (7 hours, for example): Two notifications are generated: by the work mode management and by MAI. The system administrator adjusts service outage created automatically, based on the data from work mode management, to 4 hours. For the additional 3 hours, the system administrator adjusts the MAI-generated SLA-relevant unplanned downtime.

      End of the example.
  • To report adjusted or manually created service outages, SAM requires them to be confirmed, for example, at the end of an SLA reporting period.

    Example Example

    The services are provided within the same organization. The CIO confirms service outages in agreement with the persons responsible on the business departments, the Business Information Officer, for example.

    End of the example.

    Example Example

    The services are provided to external clients. The IT service manager of the service provider confirms service outages in agreement with the customer persons responsible.

    End of the example.
  • To display or create reports, you have the following options:

    • If the user has access to SAP Solution Manager, the availability and uptime of managed objects can be displayed graphically in a dashboard.

    • If the user does not have access to SAP Solution Manager, as an IT Service Manager you can export the data to a Microsoft Excel table for reporting.

Configuration

To enable SAM to collect, compute and display the confirmed data for a monitored system, configure the following parameters:

  • Agreed service times: a weekly timetable which defines the promised availability of a service, for example, 24/7 or 10/5 availability during the business hours of workdays

  • Threshold values defining the promised minimum availability in per-cent: for example 99.5% of the time agreed upon in the SLA

From this data, Service Availability Management computes the following KPIs:

  • The SLA-relevant service availability per managed object is computed according to the following formula:

    ( Agreed service time (min) - SLA-relevant unplanned downtimes (min.) ) / Agreed service time (min.)

  • SAM Uptime: Time since the last unplanned downtime.

Integration

Service Availability Monitoring is in the Technical Administration work center.

Prerequisites

  • You have set up the monitored systems in the Technical Monitoring.

  • You have authorization for Service Availability Monitoring. For more information, see the SAP Solution Manager Security Guide on SAP Service Marketplace, at Start of the navigation path http://service.sap.com/instguidesInformation published on SAP site Next navigation step SAP Components Next navigation step SAP Solution Manager Next navigation step <current release> End of the navigation path.

Features

  • Maintenance view for service outages: Display, maintain, or confirm service outages

  • Service Level Reporting: Display the Availability and Uptime in a dashboard

Activities

SAM provides the following roles (authorizations) to implement a role concept and to organize the activities in SAM:

  • SAM configuration user (the person responsible for SAP Solution Manager configuration, for example)

    To set up Service Availability Monitoring according to the SLA contract, the SAM configuration user

    • defines the scope of SLA-relevant managed objects

    • defines agreed service times

    • defines threshold values for the availability of the SLA-relevant managed objects

    • schedules MAI and WMM service outage import jobs

    • to implement a role concept, assigns authorizations to SAM users, for example,

      • to maintain service outages as system administrators responsible for managed objects

      • to confirm service outages as IT service managers

      • display the reported SAM data in the dashboard, as Business Information Officers

    • maintains the business partners so that the system administrators responsible are notified about service outages, according to the business partner function

    For more information, see Configuring Service Availability Management.

  • SAM edit user (a system administrator, for example)

    The system administrator responsible for a managed object is informed about the issues and downtimes which affected it. The system administrator responsible

    • checks the measured downtime data, and adjust automatically created service outages.

    • if a downtime was not detected automatically, creates a service outage manually

    • to check what was agreed with the customer or end user, displays agreed service times.

    For more information, see Adjusting Service Outages.

  • SAM confirmation user (an IT service manager, for example)

    The IT service manager is typically the interface between service provider and customer or end users. The IT service manager confirms service outages maintained or created by the administrator responsible for the managed object.

    For more information, see Confirming a Service Outage, as an IT Service Manager.

  • SAM display user (an end user, for example)

    The key user responsible for the application end users, the Business Information Officer, for example,

    • via the SAM dashboard, monitor and report the availability of managed objects and compare reported and promised availability.

    • display service outages (requires access to SAP Solution Manager)

    • display the agreed service times (requires access to SAP Solution Manager)

    For more information, see Reporting Monthly or Yearly Service Availability Data.