2.5.4 Associating managed targets with users

Users of JP1/OA can use a unit called a consumer to group business systems by common attributes, such as the company and department to which they belong or their importance. The concept of a consumer allows an association to be formed between managed targets and consumer use of those targets. This makes it easier to locate a physical or virtual host where a problem has occurred, even when working with multiple consumers each of whom can operate a large-scale business system.

Example of associating devices with users

The following shows an example of business systems of two departments using consumers to associate managed devices (VMs) with consumer use of those devices. This example creates consumers for business systems operated by two departments as shown in the table below.

These consumers group devices by department and by the importance of the business system. Therefore, this example will involve the creation of four consumers.

Department name	Business system	Importance	VM name	Consumer name
Sales department	Call center system	Critical	VM1	Sales department (Critical)
			VM2
			VM3
Sales department	Sales management system	Important	VM4	Sales department (Important)
Sales department	Email management system	Important	VM5	Sales department (Important)
General affairs department	Email management system	Important	VM5	General affairs department (Important)
General affairs department	Attendance management system	General	VM6	General affairs department (General)

In this manual, the importance assigned to a business system has no internal relation to the threshold values you set in 2.5.5 Configuring device monitoring.

Procedure

In the Administration tab, select Consumer Settings and then Consumers.
In the Consumers window, click Create Consumer, and enter a name for the consumer in the Consumer Name field.

For this example, enter Sales department (Critical).
Select Grade.

The options are Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze, in order from most to least important. The administrator can select the grade most appropriate to the importance of the business system.

For this example, select Platinum.
In the Description text box, enter the company name, business system name, and other information that is helpful to have at hand when communicating with the consumer.

You can specify any other relevant information in the Description text box. Adding more details in the Description text box might make it easier for administrators to respond to consumer inquiries and resolve issues more quickly.
In the Link text box, enter the URL of the system where the customer information is managed.

Note that the Link text box is useful when the customer information is managed on other Web systems.
In the Display Name text box, enter the name displayed for the link.

If you did not use the Display Name text box, the URL entered in the Link text box is displayed without change.
Specify Assign Resources.
Select the VMs tab, and then click the Add VMs button.
Note
The following resources are automatically assigned to the consumer. If you want to disable automatic assignment of resources, deselect each option in Advanced option.
- Virtual machines that run on a hypervisor that is to be assigned to the consumer
- Applications that run on a virtual machine, or on a host, that is to be assigned to the consumer
In the Available VMs area of the Add VMs window, select check boxes, and then click Occupy.

For this example, add the virtual machines you registered in 2.5.3 Registering management targets.

Note

In this example, to assign VM5 to Sales department (Important), and then assign it to General affairs department (Important), click Share. VM5 is shared between Sales department (Important) and General affairs department (Important).
Click OK.
Make sure that the VMs have been added to the Manually Selected VMs list in Assign Resources, and then click OK.
Repeat steps 2 through 10 to register the consumers Sales department (Critical), Sales department (Important), General affairs department (Important)and General affairs department (General).

Note

You can view information about the consumers you registered in the Consumer Information dialog box. To display this dialog box, click Consumer in the Consumers window.

Next steps

Configure device monitoring.

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