Many people tend to believe that BPPM implementation is simply BPPM installation. In fact, installation is only a small part of implementation. We will discuss some key points about installation here and leave other parts of implementation to the next few posts.
Keep in mind that implementation doesn't start with installation. It starts with planning.
1) Do not start installation before capacity planning. You need to decide how many BPPM servers, how many BPPM cells, and how many PATROL agents you need to install. Not only you need to consider your current business capability, you also need to consider future growth as well.
2) Do not start installation before high availability planning. You need to decide if you want to have fail-over capability for BPPM servers, BPPM cells, and BPPM remote monitoring agents. If high availability is desired, you also need to decide the level of high availability (application, OS, or VM level). You must understand what kind of protection each level of high availability offers you. High availability decision is first determined by your business requirements and then determined by your implementation budget and maintenance budget.
3) Do not start installation before remote monitoring planning. Although most monitoring happens locally, some monitoring can only be done remotely such as VMWare and ping monitoring, and some monitoring gives you the option between local and remote monitoring such as OS monitoring. There are pros and cons between local and remote monitoring that you must understand.
4) Do not start installation before you decide how you want to install each PATROL agent. BPPM uses PATROL agent to collect data. Although some collection can happen remotely, majority of data must be collected locally. Installing hundreds and thousands of PATROL agents is a labor intensive work though different installation methods have different requirements. You can choose manual installation, CMA based installation, server duplication, using old PATROL Distribution Server, using BMC Client Management software, or using BMC BladeLogic client, etc. You need to understand how long each installation method will take you and if there is an additional software license you must purchase.
5) Do not start installation before you decide how you want to assign agent tags to each PATROL agent. An agent tag tells what information should be monitored on each server. For example, your AIX server with Oracle database running should have an agent tag for UNIX operation system and another agent tag for Oracle database. There are different ways to assign agent tags to each server including as part of installation package, as a post installation script, or through CMA. But you need to have the decision made in advance - this is what I refer as 'framework'.
6) Do not start installation before you decide a name convention to name each BPPM component in your environment. Without having a consistent way to name each server, cell, integration service, configuration file in your dev, QA, and production environment, sooner or later, you will find yourself in a big mess. This is another thing I refer as 'framework'.
Your implementation team (consultants or employees) should be able to describe to you various options as well as pros and cons in the above decisions. You, as a decision maker, should make the decision together with your implementation team on whether or not and how you should go with BPPM from resource point of view.
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