Service Availability Management using SAP SolutionManager 7.2 – Part 1
Service Availability Management (SAM) reports SLA (Service Level Agreement)-relevant down times of managed systems (technical systems on which business-critical business transactions are performed) 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. Based on this data, several analytical reports are created to give an insight on how the SLA is being adhered to.
Service Availability Management is broadly divided into the following categories:
- Definition of a service
- Maintaining outages
- Reviewing outages
- Reporting
In this blog you will learn how to define a service for measuring the SLA compliance.
A service definition is the technical translation of the Service Level Agreement between a business and its IT team. It contains details like entities for which the agreement is valid, availability pattern and contractual maintenance.
Let’s take an example:
ABC corporation has got 10 systems connected to their SAP Solution Management system that has to be monitored/measured.
The SLA mentions these systems have to be 99.8% available for business on all 24*7 for the next 6 months.
However, to provide patches, on Sunday, 6 hours of downtime is allowed.
Managed Systems :
The IT systems connected to SAP Solution Manager and whose availability has to be maintained is often the first step in service definition
Availability:
The duration for which a system has to be available is termed as availability.
From the above example, this is how availability definition is done.
Contractual Maintenance:
This is the agreed down time for maintaining the system. It can be defined as discreet dates or as a pattern.
From the above example, every Sunday 6 hours starting from 10:00 AM
SAP Solution Manager can now understand the Service Level Agreement.
In the next blog in this series you can see how to maintain down times (automatically and manually) .
short and crisp. Waiting for the next one!!!
Dear,
I could indicate an email to ask some questions about your SAM blog.
Kind Regards.
Matias Prado
Where do I start to configure SAM? I can’t seem to find the menu Service Availability Management Configuration in Solman Setup page. Clicking the link from the Technical Administration Workcenter yields an error “Session with type MG and number AGS_SERV_AVA_ is not valid”..
Never mind this. Turns out since SP 03, SAM doesn't need configuration from Solman_Setup. But still, a configuration link shows up at the Technical Administration Workcenter.
From 7.2 SP03, configuration is no more necessary to start using Service Availability Management.
Hi,
Thanks for info, very useful information. When i launch the Service availability Tile from Sol man launch pad, and choose technical systems, i don't see any data. I completed the required steps in Service Availability Management.
Any idea as to what could be missing...?
Regards
Praveen
Hello Praveen,
You need to create a service definition for the system you want to measure the availability for. Once you do that, configure technical monitoring and work modes and you should get outage data when it is available.
Regards,
Resmi.
Where can I do that? It there any in depth tutorial that explains where I configure all this and which roles I need.
Hello there,
we try to implement the same, but the entities in our system is empty, but all managed systems are configured fine. Did anyone had the same problem?
Best Regards
Christian
Hi ,
when i click the service availability management it gives the error "Session with type MG and number AGS_SERV_AVA_ is not valid".
Though i click the service availability in sm_workcenter and provide the system it doesn't show the details that i expected.
Do i need to perform additional activities?/
Regards,
balaji
Hi Reshmi,
Greetings for the day...!!
You have explained it well. This blog will help end users a lot.
Regards,
Aniket Borkar.