Service Availability Management
Service Availability Management
Service Availability Management in SAP Focused Run provides availability reporting for business-critical systems, databases or services. It calculates the availability based on outages detected by system monitoring and compares it to defined availability Service Availability Levels. Unplanned outages are automatically imported from system monitoring. Planned downtimes are automatically imported from work mode management. They must be reviewed and adjusted by system administrators and confirmed by IT service managers or other supervisors before they are taken into account in the availability reporting. The adjusted downtime data is called service outages. Service Availability Management can be the single source of truth for Availability Service Level Agreement reporting.
The high level process is as follows:
Service Availability Management consists out of the following pages:
- The Overview page shows the calculated availability for the selected entities.
- The Outages page shows the outages for the selected entities and allows to create or maintain outages.
- The Service Availability Definitions page shows the Service Availability Definitions for the selected entities and allows to maintain additional service definitions.
- The Analytics page provides up time reporting.
Maintain a Service Definition for each system, database or service that has to be managed by Service Availability Management.
How to open Service Availability Management
- Open the Launchpad
- Select Technical Administration
- Select Service Availability
Overview/Service Reporting
The Service Reporting page shows the calculated availability for the selected systems, databases and services in selected reporting periods. It gives you a quick overview whether the availability service level agreement was met or breached.
From the Service Reporting you have the following options:
- Switch between a monthly or yearly display depending on the defined reporting period.
- Select different reporting periods
- Select whether the displayed availability is calculated based on confirmed outages only or based on all outages.
- Select a reporting period to open the Availability Charts for the selected reporting period and compare the availability of multiple systems /services
- Select an entity to open the Availability Charts for this entity and compare current and previous reporting periods
Availability Charts
From the Availability Charts you have the following options:
- Compare the availability for multiple systems in one reporting period or the availability for a system in multiple reporting periods.
- Select one system to drill down to the availability for months or days and to identify the months or days where outages occurred and the availability dropped.
(Whether you can drill down to days or drill down to months depends on the reporting period defined in the Service Availability Definition.)
Outage Summary
The Outage Summary view provides an overview over open and confirmed outages and Service Level Agreement.
The following data is shown:
| Entity and Entity type | Identifier and type of the system, database or service |
|---|---|
Reporting Period | The reporting period for which outages were recorded |
SLA Breached | The SLA is breached when calculated availability based on confirmed outages is below the availability SLA for the reporting period |
Open outages | Number of outages in status New, in process, to be reviewed. They need to be processed and confirmed or hidden |
Confirmed outages | Number of outages that have been processed and are confirmed |
| Unplanned Confirmed Downtime (as of SAP Focused Run 2.0 FP02) | Duration of all confirmed unplanned outages in minutes |
| Unplanned Total Downtime (as of SAP Focused Run 2.0 FP02) | Duration of all (confirmed and unconfirmed) unplanned outages in minutes |
Remaining Downtime Confirmed | Shows how many minutes are left in the current reporting period until the SLA is breached. If the value becomes negative, SLA is already breached. It considers only the confirmed outages. |
Remaining Downtime All | Shows how many minutes are left in the current reporting period until the SLA is breached. If the value becomes negative, SLA is already breached. It considers both confirmed and unconfirmed outages. |
Availability Confirmed (%) | Shows the calculated availability in the current reporting period. It considers only confirmed outages for the calculations. |
Availability All (%) | Shows the calculated availability in the current reporting period. It considers both confirmed and unconfirmed outages. |
Availability Threshold (%) | Shows the SLA threshold defined in the Service Definition |
The Outage Overview provides the following options:
- Use the filter button to filter on systems with open outages and to filter on entities where SLA is breached
- Select one or multiple entities and press the mass maintenance button. This opens the Outage Overview view showing all outages for the selected entities in the selected reporting period. From here you can do mass or single maintenance of outages.
- Click on one system. This opens the Outage Overview view showing all outages for the selected system in the selected reporting period. From here you can do mass or single maintenance of outages.
Outage Overview
The outage overview shows the list of outages for the selected entities in the selected reporting periods. It allows to edit existing outages or create new ones.
The following data is shown:
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
| Entity and Entity type | Identifier and type of the system, database or service |
Type |
|
Status |
|
Category |
The category of the outage as maintained in the Outage Details |
SLA relevant |
Whether the outage is SLA relevant or not. Only the duration of SLA-relevant outages is considered by availability reporting. Unplanned outages are by default SLA relevant while planned downtimes are not. But this can be changed in the outage details |
Start and End time |
Start and End time of the outage |
Source |
|
Hidden |
Whether the downtime has been "hidden" or not. Hidden outages are outages that the system administrator wants to exclude from reporting because for example they are based on false alerts. Hidden outages are only shown if " Show Hidden Outages" is "Yes". |
Mass Maintenance of Outages
You can select one or several outages and perform the following mass maintenance actions for them together:
- Hide Outage: Set the selected outages to hidden. This will hide them from the outage list and exclude them from availability reporting. Hidden outages can be shown if " Show Hidden Outages" is "Yes". Hidden outages are outages that the system administrator wants to exclude from reporting. For example, because they are based on false alerts.
- Unhide Outage: Remove the hidden flag from the selected hidden outages. Afterwards they are shown again in the outage list and can be processed. Hidden outages can only be selected if " Show Hidden Outages" is set to "Yes".
- Approve Outage: Set all selected outages to status confirmed. Confirmed outages will be used in SLA calculations and availability reporting
- Reject Outage: Set all selected outages to status in process so that they must be maintained again by system administrator
- Review: Set all selected outages to status to be reviewed
- Modify: Date Time Maintain common start and end time for all selected outages together
- Set reason: Maintain common reason for all selected outages together
Create Outage
Normally, unplanned outages are detected automatically by system monitoring and transferred to Service Availability Management. Planned downtimes are imported from work mode management or system monitoring. So, the manual creation of outages is only necessary in special cases.
Proceed as follows to create new outage:
- Select the Create Outage button
- Maintain the following data:
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
Entity |
|
Type |
|
Category |
The category of the outage |
SLA relevant |
Whether the outage is SLA relevant or not. Only the duration of SLA-relevant outages is considered by availability reporting. Unplanned outages are by default SLA relevant while planned downtimes are not. But this can be changed in the outage details |
Start and End time |
Start and End time of the outage |
Reason |
Textual description of downtime reason |
Business Impact |
Textual description of business impact |
Other Comments |
Other Comments |
Click on "Save" to create the new outage. Click on Email to send a notification email about the new outage.
Please note: New outages are by default in status "New". They need to be reviewed and set to confirmed before they are taken into account for availability calculations.
Edit Outage
- Select one Outage. This opens the Outage Details screen.
- Maintain the following data:
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
Type |
|
Category |
The category of the outage |
SLA relevant |
Whether the outage is SLA relevant or not. Only the duration of SLA-relevant outages is considered by availability reporting. Unplanned outages are by default SLA relevant while planned downtimes are not. But this can be changed in the outage details |
Start and End time |
Start and End time of the outage |
Reason |
Textual description of downtime reason |
Business Impact |
Textual description of business impact |
Other Comments |
Other Comments |
Status |
|
If the outage is already set to completed you can only edit the reason, business impact and comments and revert the status.
Since SAP Focused Run 2.0 FP02 an Alert Details tab is added for unplanned outages reported by MAI. On this tab, you can view some details of the originating alert such as Alert Name, Alert Status, and Alert Start Time.
Service Availability Definitions
Each system, database or service that has to be managed by Service Availability Management needs to have an active service definition.
Select the Service Availability Definition page to see the service definitions for the selected systems.
The Service Availability Definitions Overview shows the following data for each service definition
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
Status |
|
Title |
Title |
Entity and type |
Identifier and type of the selected system, database or service |
Start and end date |
First and last validity date of the service definition |
Edit Existing Service Availability Definition
Select a service availability definition to see it's details. For existing service availability definitions, it is possible to change the end date and to add new Contractual Maintenance Periods. The other settings cannot be changed.
Add New Service Availability Definition
Select Button " Add new service availability definition" to create a new service availability definition:
To create a new service availability definition, you need to maintain the following data
General Data:
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
Title |
Title |
Start and end date |
First and last validity date of the service definition |
Time Zone |
The time zone in which availability patterns and contractual maintenances are defined |
In the entities tab:
Entity /Entity type: Select system, database or service for which the new service definition is valid.
In the Availability tab:
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
SLA Threshold (%) |
The minimum allowed availability in %. E.g.: 99.5 %, 95% |
Reporting Period |
The period for which the availability data shall be calculated. Possible values are monthly or yearly |
Pattern |
Define the daily or weekly pattern for the agreed service time during which the entity must be available per SLA. Examples:
|
In the Contractual Maintenance tab, you can define reoccurring periods and specific dates, during which maintenances are allowed without affecting the SLA. If Contractual maintenances overlap with agreed service times, the agreed service time is shortened on this day.
Handling of HANA Replication Scenarios
The following changes have been applied with FP 01 in SAM: The handling of HANA replication scenarios has been improved.
HANA Replication Scenarios are defined as follows in SAP Focused Run:
- 1 Virtual Database with relations to the related physical databases
- 2-n physical databases that act either as primary or secondary database in the HANA replication scenarios
Before SAP Focused Run 2.0 FP01 the HANA replication scenarios were not taken into account:
- A service availability definition could be created per each physical and virtual database alone.
- Outages had to be maintained per database
- Availability was calculated per database and not taking into account the complete cluster
This has been improved as of SAP Focused Run 2.0 FP01:
- A service availability definition can be created only on the virtual DB representing the complete replication cluster.
- Unplanned Outages are created automatically for the complete replication cluster and only for the times when no primary database is available
- Unplanned Outages are maintained for the complete replication cluster
- Planned Downtimes are imported from SAM only for planned downtimes on the Virtual DB.
Service Availability Definitions on HANA DBs which have been created before the upgrade to SAP Focused Run 2.0 FP01 will not be affected.
How to exclude certain availability alerts to generate outages in Service Availability Management
By default all system monitoring alerts of category Availability and context types Technical System and Technical Instance create an SLA relevant unplanned outage in Service Availability Management as soon as the alert was confirmed or the status turns to green.
You might want to exclude some availability alerts from creating outages in Service Availability Management.
As of Focused Run 2.0 FP02, this can be achieved as below:
- Identify the technical names of the availability alerts that should not lead to an outage in System Monitoring Template maintenance.
- Call transaction SM30 in the FRUN System.
- Enter the table SAM_BL_ALRT_CONF.
- Select Maintain.
- Enter the technical name of the alerts . Enter one alert name per row.
- Press save. Depending on your system settings, you might get prompted for a customizing transport request that allows to transport the blacklisted alerts to other Focused Run systems.
Based on our experience we recommend you to blacklist the following alerts (technical names are given):
- ABAP_INSTANCE_AVAILABILITY
- JAVA_INSTANCE_AVAILABILITY
- SLT_SCHEMA_ALERT
- HDB_ANOMALY_ALERT
- HDB_RESTARTED_SERVICES_ALRT_4
- HDB_REPLICATION_TIME_LAG_1018
- HDB_REPLICATION_QUEUE_SIZE_1017
- HDB_ANOMALY_ALERT
- HDB_AVL_1015_REPLICATION_STATUS_ALERT
Best Practices
- Define Service Definitions with an end date which is far in the future (e.g.31-Dec 2099) to avoid that service definitions expire unnoticed and availability reporting is no longer provided.
- It is not allowed to change SLA threshold or agreed service times in active service definitions. Proceed as follows to change the SLA threshold or the agreed service time for a system with active service definition:
- Change the end time of the active service definition to the end of the current reporting period
- Create a new service definition with a start date in the next reporting period
How the Availability is Calculated
The availability is calculated as follows: Availability (%)= (1 - OT / AST ) * 100 %
- AST ( Agreed Service Time ) is the duration of the agreed service time per Reporting Period
- OT (Outage Time) is the duration of all system outages that occurred during the Agreed Service Time
- aAST (adjusted Agreed Service Time ) is the duration of the agreed service time per Reporting Period reduced by the overlapping part of Contractual Maintenance Periods and the overlapping part of non-SLA relevant planned downtimes
- OT (Outage Time) is the duration of all system outages that occurred during the adjusted Agreed Service Time
Example
- The agreed service time is on work days from 9 am to 5 pm.
- The reporting period is monthly. The current month has 21 work days.
- A Contractual Maintenance Period is scheduled every 1st Friday of the month from 4 pm to 9 pm.
- The customer has requested an additional planned downtime on the 2nd Friday from 2 pm to 6 pm for release upgrade. The planned downtime is outside the contractual maintenance period.Despite of this it is not SLA - relevant because was requested by customer.
- A system outage occurred on the 2nd Tuesday from 1 pm – 6 pm.
Service Availability Management will calculate the availability as follows:
| Data | Content |
|---|---|
| The duration of the agreed service time is | AST = 21d*8h*60 min = 10080 min |
| The system outage lasted for 5 hours (300 minutes). But only 4 hours (240 minutes) are during AST | Ot = 240 min |
| The system availability is calculated as follows | Availability (%) = (1 - 240 min / 10080 min) ∗ 100 % = 97.62 % |