Using the Service Level Dashboard

The Service Level Dashboard integrates with Operations Manager to collect and process performance and availability data, as shown in the following figure:

The Service Level Dashboard uses a distributed application model to compile health information for application components into a service report

The Service Level Dashboard is designed to work with an existing Operations Manager infrastructure that is already configured to monitor business-critical applications. Configuring the Service Level Dashboard involves adding the following components to gather and process additional data:

• SLA definitions. The IT service manager identifies and defines the SLA agreement for a given business-critical application or service.
• Web application monitors and synthetic transactions. The IT administrator configures and deploys watcher nodes to perform synthetic transactions, such as connecting to the Web site or querying the database. A Web application monitor runs on the watcher node and uses these synthetic transactions to check availability and to measure performance of a Web page, Web site, or Web application. It monitors the Web application and then changes the health state of an object associated with the Web application based on the results of the synthetic transaction.

  It is this change in health state that the Service Level Dashboard records and reports on. The IT administrator configures the thresholds for identifying an error or warning state during a synthetic transaction. For the Service Level Dashboard, an error is equivalent to an availability exception, and a warning is equivalent to a performance exception. Because an unavailable application is, by definition, not performing as expected, availability exceptions are also factored into performance exceptions.

• Distributed application model. The IT administrator uses an Operations Manager distributed application model to define the application or service. Using the distributed application model, the IT administrator groups Web application monitors and other monitors into applications and regions for the dashboard.

  Operations Manager derives availability and performance percentages independently for each component object in the application model tree, based on the Operations Manager time in state for that object. Any rollup calculations are controlled by the standard distributed application model health rollups.

• Dashboard interface. As soon as the Service Level Dashboard components are configured and operating, you use the interface to analyze the SLA compliance data. The Service Level Dashboard evaluates each application over the defined reporting period, determines whether the application was in or out of compliance during that time (and for how long). It then lists the application as compliant or non-compliant, based on defined service level targets.

You can access the Service Level Dashboard on the Microsoft Download Center.