HP Storage Essentials SRM 6.0 User Guide for Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition SRM Software (July 2008)

HP Storage Essentials SRM 6.0 User Guide 283
Assigning a Business Cost to an Application
The management server lets you assign a business cost to an application, including virtual
applications. This information is used in Event Manager for ranking events from elements. Event
Manager determines the rank of an event by taking into account the business cost of the application
and the severity of the event. You can sort events by rank in Event Manager by clicking the Rank
column.
For example, assume you assigned a business cost of $40 to one application and a business cost of
$30 to another application. If an event with the same severity level occurs from both applications,
the $40 application has a higher rank because it has a higher business cost.
The events from the elements in the path of the applications also inherit a business cost from the
applications that use it. For example, assume a host has an application assigned a cost of $30. The
host would have a business cost of $30. If the host has two applications (both valued at $30), the
host would be valued at $60, because the two applications are using it. Likewise, the switch
connected to the host would also have a value of $60, because the two $30 applications use it. If a
switch has a $40 application on one host and two $30 applications on another host, the switch has
a value of $100.
The cost of the storage system is determined by the applications in its path. Two storage systems
connected to a switch can have different business costs, based on the applications in their path. For
Table 33 Show Impact Results
If you select Show Impact
for...
The software highlights...
An Application (virtual or
real)
Elements required by the application, such as its host and a switch.
A Host Elements that are dependent on the host, such as its applications.
Elements that are required by the host, such as switches.
A Switch Elements dependent on the switch, such as hosts and storage
systems
A Storage System Elements dependent on the storage system, such as hosts.