eG Administration
 

Maintenance Analysis

Maintenance is a mandatory task in many large IT infrastructures. Maintenance procedures would be regularly performed on the components in such infrastructures to ensure peak performance. Also, to minimize false alarms that might be raised during maintenance, maintenance policies might have been configured for a wide majority of these components using the eG administrative interface. The key need of the administrators of such large environments therefore is the knowledge of which components are under maintenance, at what level (i.e.,host/component/test-level), and when the next maintenance cycle is scheduled for these components, so that they can promptly alert service managers and domain experts about the non-availability of their critical applications/devices during the maintenance periods. Moreover, since new components will continue to be added to such infrastructures, it is also the responsibility of the administrator to analyze and identify those components which need to be brought under the purview of maintenance.

To provide administrators with quick and easy access to maintenance-related information and to enable them to efficiently review and analyze maintenance schedules, eG Enterprise provides a Maintenance Analysis page. This page serves as a single, central interface using which administrators can view and analyze the maintenance policies configured and applied across the environment.

To access this page, click on the icon available in the Admin tab. Then select the Maintenance Policies sub-menu in the Alerts tile of the eG administrative interface. Now click this icon () that exists in the right top corner of the Maintenance Policies page. To analyze maintenance details using this page, do the following:

  • First, pick a criterion for analysis from the Analysis By list. The options are listed below:
    • All
    • Host
    • Component
    • Test
    • Test for Host
    • Test for Component
    • Descriptor
    • Descriptor for Component
    • Policy
    • Time Constraints
    • Wild Card

  • To run a quick search across policies to locate a particular policy, use the Search option in this page. Specify the whole/part of the policy name to search for in the Search text box. All policies with names that embed the specified search string will then be listed.
  • Finally click on Show Analysis button.

To view the details of a particular policy, select Policy option from the Analysis By mode and select the Policy name from the Policy list. Then, click on the Show Analysis button. This will provide the following details:

  • The Maintenance Summary section that lists the type of elements (hosts/tests/components etc.) and the number of elements of each type to which the chosen policy applies;
  • Separate sections for every element type that displays the names of elements that are under maintenance; for instance, if a policy is associated with hosts and tests, then a Hosts Under Maintenance and a Tests Under Maintenance section will list the hosts and tests managed by the chosen policy.
  • In addition to the name of the elements chosen for maintenance, each of the section will provide the below-mentioned details:

    • Name of the policy that applies to the selected element;
    • The status of the policy showing whether the policy is currently active on the chosen element;
    • The timeline for each policy
    • When next the maintenance policy is scheduled to be effective;
    • Similarly, to view the details of maintenance policies that are configured to suppress alarms during specific time periods, select Time Constraints from the Analysis By list. This will invoke the Time Constraints field. Choose the required time period from this field. Finally, click on Show Analysis button.

To view the maintenance analysis of one particular Host/ Component/Test/Test for Host/ Test for Component, do the following.

  • Select the Host/ Component/Test/Test for Host/ Test for Component in the Analysis By mode.
  • This will invoke the required field to be chosen. Let's assume that you wish to know the maintenance configurations of one particular host Linux alone, then in such a case, choose Host in the Analysis By mode, and type Linux in the Search text box and click on the right arrow button next to it. Doing so will list out all the linux hosts in the Host field.
  • Now select the particular linux host that you wish to analyze and finally click on Show Analysis button. This will provide the following maintenance analysis information of the host Linux in the Quick Maintenance Details for Host - LINUX section:

    • Status of the host in the policy
    • Policy name,
    • Group name to which the policy has been grouped,
    • Time and date specifications scheduled for maintenance and the
    • Very first next schedule date for the maintenance

You can also choose the Wild Card option from the Analysis By list to view the details of those policies that are applied on the Server/VM/Desktops using Wild Card patterns. Choosing this option will list all the Wild card patterns created in your target environment in the Pattern list box. You can also use the Search text box to quickly locate the policy of interest to you. In this case, specify the whole/part of the policy name to search for and click the ‘magnifying glass’ icon to search for policies that match the specified search string. Clicking the Show Analysis button will list all the Server/VM/Desktops on which the maintenance policy with the chosen wild card pattern is applied.

At any given point in time, you can Save the results of the analysis as a PDF file or a CSV file or print the same using the corresponding icons at the right, top corner of the Maintenance Analysis page.