Understanding the role of business groups

Does the call center have enough bandwidth to run VoIP? How does current WAN configuration affect your just-in-time inventory system? What business processes have the greatest impact on systems?

Observer Reporting Server allows you to accurately assess the impact of mission-critical applications on your business through extensive reports. Observer Reporting Server also provides auto-baselining capabilities for establishing benchmarks, understanding typical performance levels, and running day-to-day comparisons.

By using a business group to assemble multiple systems into a logical entity, you can create reports specific for that entity. A business group is used to create a collection of data sources from one or more networks to create a data set against which to run the reports. Observer Reporting Server has several default business groups to which you can assign your data sources. You may also create your own business groups. You may want to create your own if you want to organize your data by department, location, multi-tiered application, or for some other reason.

Multiple business groups can be combined using super groups. Super groups allow for increased flexibility and scalability. For example, you might create a super group for each branch office, and populate each super group with the business groups they need access to.

A business group may contain:

Observer Suite analyzer getting trending data from any number of probe instances

Observer Infrastructure installations and the devices and monitors they poll

Routers specified by MAC address or DLCI address if monitored using the WAN functionality in Observer

Any device that is not a probe instance or router (such as a printer, server, or workstation) using a DNS name, MAC address, IP address, or IP range

For example, you have 14 web servers across your network that are monitored by three different probe instances. You can create a business group that views the statistical data from those three probes. Then, by selecting the IP addresses of the web servers, you can create a report that shows you just the data from the web servers as a group.

The Business Group tab shows the default business groups and any custom groups you have created. You can add, change, and delete groups from this tab. All business groups you create along with the custom ones appear on the ORS report web page along the left side.